Had Allen & Cliff Giddens on board today while in Jax with their parents. The boat ramp looked like a July 4th weekend, on an ordinary Tuesday.
Thank goodness, it's all the slick sea starved offshore warriors, that haven't been able to do anything, because of the 21 days worth of incessant east winds.
I'm more than happy to do just what I do and that's, no long boat rides.
So the boys met me at the dock at 8:30am. I decided to fish the incoming tide at the big rocks for a change. Drifting our floats straight down the jetty with not a single sniff.
It just wasn't happening, so I waited for the tide to turn by anchoring up and using some finger mullet about 4" that I had in my second live well pinned to a leader and a 4oz bank sinker pitched out on the bottom along the south tip.
That's where Cliff caught a 12 pound, 31" Redfish. We tired for a second one, but the dullness of bottom fishing was more than I could take, and the boys seemed restless too.
I did all I could to roust a smile or a conversation out of them, but they were the quite types. The exact opposite of me, which for 6 hours is tough.
So we went back to the trusty float-rig. We went back to where we first started, because I do not give up, and I do not run around all over chasing a bite. Patience and the tides timing will bring what it brings. We ended up nailing 5-giant Yellowmouths in a row, 2-3 pounds a piece. Then, the Specks showed and we boxed 3 of them, and that was about it. Everything shut down.
So I moved no more than 200 yards, but to a very difficult area to fish. And Cliff, nailed a 4 pound Speck. We got waked, knocked off anchor twice. And the difficulty of float-fishing this spot forced me to make a run down river.
We stopped by the river/ICW intersection and worked an area that I can't wait to actually have fish on it again. Last year I could go in there, bang 5-10 healthy Specks on almost any falling tide. But not this Spring.....not so far. Yesterday Mike pulled one nice Speck off it and that was it. So we slid into a Redfish "go to spot", before packing it in for the day.
Looking for that perfect 18-27 incher that does swim this area, Cliff hooked up a nice 18" Speck instead, and Allen hooked that pupper 14" Redfish.
If we had enough time to possibly sit there and work the area hard for another hour or two we could have probably picked up a keeper Redbass or Flounder, but it was getting late.
So I ended up cleaning 5 Specks to 4 pounds and 5 yellowmouths to 3 pounds at the end of the day. I think the boys will have a good fish fry.
The photo outside the boat was taken by Ron Brooks from http://www.saltfishing.about.com/ Ron's and outdoor writer and does some great local fishing articles. Plus I knew of him because I used to buy mass amounts of my "Capt Dave's Jetty-Jigs", that I used to sell in my online tackle shop from his cousin in Tennessee. Ron was out fishing solo on his flats boat, loading up for a fish fry. So you may see the CaptDaves.com-Sportfishing boat in an article someday soon on Ron's ABOUT.com site. (thanks for the pics, Ron)
2 more days to go.......till I get a days rest. And the oil changed in the Honda outboard, and my Taxes sent to the IRS.
Whewwwwwwwww
