Wow....It was way too warm today! Setting heat records in Late October???
Yeah, and climate change doesn't exist? I felt as if it did today. The only thing that keep it in the "okay" level was the 20 knot south winds that were said to be 10 knots on every single weather report I heard or saw. Dang weather guessers!
Had Keith C. and 3 of his friends out today. And with 4 people the best thing to do to keep down the Fubar's is just do some bottom fishing for the big Reds. No float-rigging today.
It's way too hard to have 4 people all trying to keep their floats from tangling behind the boat. Plus the winds would have made it even worse.
So since Keith and the guys had a big night at the Jags game on Monday night ( they said it wasn't a game but rather a slaughter care of the Colts) We didn't leave till after 8:30am. Hell, I didn't watch. Ball sports don't do much for me. And I'm, sound asleep at 9 or 10pm.
And off to the jetties we went. And the south 10 knots was HONKIN'. And the seas were sloppy and AGAIN... I couldn't anchor for if I did, the lines would have been over the bow again. So we made one drift. But not after looking around a bit. I wanted to see BAIT. And if I did I would have felt a lot more confident. Pogies, those threadfins, something. But as we cruised from behind the surf and out to 20 feet, there was hardly anything on my scope compared to my last trip out there. So I reluctantly went and made a controlled drift with two lines out. And we had just one lil' shark bite, that mutilated a piece of cut Croaker.
So we headed back in the river and went to the Navy Base area. It took a little while but as the tide started to really get going (the current is always goofy there, because of the way the water pours out of the basin) But we got some Reds. And not big ones. The first two were 12 and 15 pounds. So after a short bite we moved on up river.
Picking some fish off at almost every spot, but not all. Because the current was so bad at a few I choose, that my anchor couldn't hold all of us and add in that wind. It was a lot to ask of my JettyWolf anchor. But heck, I don't usually park it in 38-44 feet when float-rigging! So doing a few deep water Bull Red trips, I'll guess I'll just have to fish some less deep spots. So that's what I did. And it worked.
The guys ended up with Reds from 12 pounds to 30 pounds.....so far the largest. With those 20-24 pounders in between. Which for this year seems to be the norm. Hmmm, why is it I remember fishing these same spots years ago and the average Bull Red was 28-32 pounds, and some in the high 40's? I guess it doesn't matter, these are still some big ass fish for folks that don't get to do this all the time.
No keepers, and didn't even really try to fish any spots for smaller ones. Because I was on a mission by the mid-day. To just find a place where the wind was blocked a bit and the current was running good. And to keep getting some bites.
We finished up along a spot that's really shallow, maybe 16-18 feet. But had produced Bull Reds for me in the past up to 50 pounds, with a lot of 40 pounders. Not a big time known spot. But if you have longevity around here, you'd know that it does produce. And we hit 3 right away on this spot and that's where the largest one came from.....plus it's real easy to fish.
I'm sort of ready to go back to some serious float-rig fishing, already. A true addicted Float Freak like me can only "bait-n-wait" so much, before the staring at rod tips becomes sort of "been there done that", and now it's time to go back to highly inter-active fishing with light tackle.
I have the start of some heavier grade Float-rigging rods (G. Loomis Bucara's) and reels (Shimano Tekoka 300's). I'm attempting to get ready for big 30+ inch reds along the jetty rocks along with heavy weight Sheepshead and Drum in the deep winter months. Because you just can't fish the float the way I do with the same light rods everywhere.
I like lighter trout leads in some instances, and 2+ ounce trout leads other areas, it's all about presentation, water depth and current speed. Yes, I'm ate up with these small details, even though it probably doesn't matter to anyone on my boat. It matters to me! I can't believe some of the tackle I see on some of my competitors boats....cheap, cheap, cheap stuff.
HERE'S A PHOTO THAT'S A BLAST FROM THE PAST. REMEMBER WHEN? (Jan. 18 2006) It was of course winter....and we had 25 Reds like this in a matter of an hour and a half as fast as you could get your float and live shrimp up on the rocks. Dang it was cold that day. But the float-rigging was HOT! (we also caught limits of fat Trout)
Here's all of today's photo's on my recent catch page link: http://www.captdaves.com/Catch1.htm
