How Gloomy can a winter day get?
It doesn't matter, when you have Kirk M. on board. Kirk as you may remember is a fella I've had out with me many times in the last month or so. He's the guy from N. Dakota. And is doing 2 trips a month, this winter. The stuff that bothers most people, like wind, cold, fog, and wet doesn't effect him one bit. Even if all of those conditions are in the same day. And with that kind of attitude, it doesn't bother me either. Because I can hang with the best or worst conditions, also.
Well, since I've been teaching Kirk the inshore fishing ropes (IE: that the Float-rig rules!) You may have seen a few of his land based catches he made on a prior post on this reports blog, aptly named...."The Student".
He found himself a nice lil' spot along the inlet's rocks and has been wackin' the Trout pretty damn good lately. So of course, we were all excited to fish it from the boat. And that's where we went this morning at 8am.
Bundled up in my usual post Christmas attire of multiple layers of fleece, and with my slicker pants with shorts underneath. I have to remain Florida like...C'mon.
We soft peddled our way over to his spot and anchored up, so precisely, I amazed myself!
When he said, "that's the rock I stand on"....That's where I put the stern of the boat. Then I hit the "save" button on my GPS map plotter. "It's logged and in my files, now!!"
Now I have to give that rock a name, and I think "Kirk's Rock" it'll be.
Yes, I have many names for rocks out there. The Poop Rock, The Bull, Prudential, The Cave, The Blow-out, is just a few that come to mind. Fisherman are famous for wacko names for where they caught a fish. It always has to be something that you'll remember.
So here we are at the wrong tide or more like the tide that Kirk said he doesn't catch them on. "The water's too high and the currents too fast", he says. "It's okay, we have all day to try it on and off if we want", I tell him.
So we grab the "HD" Float-rig rods -(8' G. Loomis Bucara's matched up with Shimano Tek-300 levelwinds, a 2 oz Salmon Stalker EVA float, a 2 oz. Trout lead, and a heavier leader and hook.) All for deeper, swifter water. And the ass to pull a big fish from any structure.
We weren't on anchor 5 minutes, and I floated my rig way, way past the hot spot that Kirk pointed out, and my Float goes down! I click the reel into gear and reel and lift......
"It's a good fish! Pulls line, and it's a Trout!"
Ahhh, a nice 21-22 incher, in the net. I drop back in the water with a new shrimp, let it go back to the same spot, quickly learning the way the current moves along this patch of jetty and my Float goes down again....drag pulls harder, loads of head shaking!
"Oh, Oh, this may be a giant Trout. "
Now remember Kirk caught a giant Trout here. So that's why we're here. For "Gator Trout", not anything else. As I work the fish back towards the boat, all I can think about is that this maybe a 6-8 pound Trout..."please let it be a Gator! It sure feels like one."
Then we see it, and it's a 26" Redbass! A nice catch, but a let down. A real let down.
Yes folks, a 26" Redbass can be a let down to a Gator Trout hunter. It happens to me all the time.
This time I really thought the fish was a big Trout, because it did way more head shaking, and less running. Usually Redbass run, and run. And do less head shaking than their speckled counter parts. But Specks & Spots, go together. So it wasn't all that bad.
The problem was, that Kirk of Fargo, "master of the Kirk Rock area", had only one bite!
We have a deal, we fish together. No one sits and watches the other guy. And no matter who catches what, Kirk gets 99% of all the fish. All I need, is some dinner that night. So he usually goes away with a pretty damn hefty cooler full, each time.
So we keep at it and wear out the spot all we can. Going for deeper drifts, shallower, closer to the rocks, further behind the boat. We worked that place till each live shrimp saw ever jetty rock from the boat to 100 feet behind the boat.
And not a single other bite!
So we moved on.....
To the South Jetty, then Snag Ally, and then again at low tide, back to Kirk's Rock.
"this ought to do it, the tides much lower now"...is what both of us thought.
Nothing!
"Holy cold water Batman.....I think we have a problem!"
We sure did. For some reason no matter what we did, we couldn't get bit.
At Kirk's Rock, both of us had so much confidence that because it was now lower tide and the current was slowing. "If they would have fired up, it would have to be NOW!"
And they never did.
I even broke out some bottom rigs, for a little 'Bait-N-Wait' fishing and never lost a shrimp to a gamefish.
So then we went and tried a "Capt Dave Gator trout spot" on the north Jetty, that's like "Kirk's Rock". Deeper, swifter and if there's a Gator Trout in the area, it ought to be here too. We caught nothing. And I even tried a bottom bait too, as Kirk worked the rocks on his Float-rig.
"Okay, were they the only two fish at the jetties today?"
But we can't quit now. So we packed it up and ran to another zip code up river.
First spot, had some nice current, but only Pinfish. We worked it feverishly too.
So we went to a last ditch spot. I managed a small Speck. Then made a slight adjustment, and found a bunch of small Yellowmouth Trout, and Kirk finally caught one decent keeper, and a few throw backs.
I know who had the "funk" on him, today! Mother River was paying him back for all the fish he's caught off of his rock during the week. And I was thrown a few bones, and I'm usually the one screamin', "I GOT BAIT TOO!"
So it was a frustrating day overall. But of course we had a blast out in the gloomy, nasty, cold weather. Can ya tell by the photo's that it was a perfect "winter day"?
Dark and grey without one glimpse of sun shine.
I know the fish are tough to catch in the 59 degree water.
Oh, the life of a Gator Trout hunter....it's a tough job sometimes. But it's not all that bad when ya have a guy like Kirk on the boat. Who always has an up beat attitude, mixed with killer instinct.
Can't wait to see the sun again. Because when I do and the Trout do too, it may not be good for their health and well being.
It doesn't matter, when you have Kirk M. on board. Kirk as you may remember is a fella I've had out with me many times in the last month or so. He's the guy from N. Dakota. And is doing 2 trips a month, this winter. The stuff that bothers most people, like wind, cold, fog, and wet doesn't effect him one bit. Even if all of those conditions are in the same day. And with that kind of attitude, it doesn't bother me either. Because I can hang with the best or worst conditions, also.
Well, since I've been teaching Kirk the inshore fishing ropes (IE: that the Float-rig rules!) You may have seen a few of his land based catches he made on a prior post on this reports blog, aptly named...."The Student".
He found himself a nice lil' spot along the inlet's rocks and has been wackin' the Trout pretty damn good lately. So of course, we were all excited to fish it from the boat. And that's where we went this morning at 8am.
Bundled up in my usual post Christmas attire of multiple layers of fleece, and with my slicker pants with shorts underneath. I have to remain Florida like...C'mon.
We soft peddled our way over to his spot and anchored up, so precisely, I amazed myself!
When he said, "that's the rock I stand on"....That's where I put the stern of the boat. Then I hit the "save" button on my GPS map plotter. "It's logged and in my files, now!!"
Now I have to give that rock a name, and I think "Kirk's Rock" it'll be.
Yes, I have many names for rocks out there. The Poop Rock, The Bull, Prudential, The Cave, The Blow-out, is just a few that come to mind. Fisherman are famous for wacko names for where they caught a fish. It always has to be something that you'll remember.
So here we are at the wrong tide or more like the tide that Kirk said he doesn't catch them on. "The water's too high and the currents too fast", he says. "It's okay, we have all day to try it on and off if we want", I tell him.
So we grab the "HD" Float-rig rods -(8' G. Loomis Bucara's matched up with Shimano Tek-300 levelwinds, a 2 oz Salmon Stalker EVA float, a 2 oz. Trout lead, and a heavier leader and hook.) All for deeper, swifter water. And the ass to pull a big fish from any structure.
We weren't on anchor 5 minutes, and I floated my rig way, way past the hot spot that Kirk pointed out, and my Float goes down! I click the reel into gear and reel and lift......
"It's a good fish! Pulls line, and it's a Trout!"
Ahhh, a nice 21-22 incher, in the net. I drop back in the water with a new shrimp, let it go back to the same spot, quickly learning the way the current moves along this patch of jetty and my Float goes down again....drag pulls harder, loads of head shaking!
"Oh, Oh, this may be a giant Trout. "
Now remember Kirk caught a giant Trout here. So that's why we're here. For "Gator Trout", not anything else. As I work the fish back towards the boat, all I can think about is that this maybe a 6-8 pound Trout..."please let it be a Gator! It sure feels like one."
Then we see it, and it's a 26" Redbass! A nice catch, but a let down. A real let down.
Yes folks, a 26" Redbass can be a let down to a Gator Trout hunter. It happens to me all the time.
This time I really thought the fish was a big Trout, because it did way more head shaking, and less running. Usually Redbass run, and run. And do less head shaking than their speckled counter parts. But Specks & Spots, go together. So it wasn't all that bad.
The problem was, that Kirk of Fargo, "master of the Kirk Rock area", had only one bite!
We have a deal, we fish together. No one sits and watches the other guy. And no matter who catches what, Kirk gets 99% of all the fish. All I need, is some dinner that night. So he usually goes away with a pretty damn hefty cooler full, each time.
So we keep at it and wear out the spot all we can. Going for deeper drifts, shallower, closer to the rocks, further behind the boat. We worked that place till each live shrimp saw ever jetty rock from the boat to 100 feet behind the boat.
And not a single other bite!
So we moved on.....
To the South Jetty, then Snag Ally, and then again at low tide, back to Kirk's Rock.
"this ought to do it, the tides much lower now"...is what both of us thought.
Nothing!
"Holy cold water Batman.....I think we have a problem!"
We sure did. For some reason no matter what we did, we couldn't get bit.
At Kirk's Rock, both of us had so much confidence that because it was now lower tide and the current was slowing. "If they would have fired up, it would have to be NOW!"
And they never did.
I even broke out some bottom rigs, for a little 'Bait-N-Wait' fishing and never lost a shrimp to a gamefish.
So then we went and tried a "Capt Dave Gator trout spot" on the north Jetty, that's like "Kirk's Rock". Deeper, swifter and if there's a Gator Trout in the area, it ought to be here too. We caught nothing. And I even tried a bottom bait too, as Kirk worked the rocks on his Float-rig.
"Okay, were they the only two fish at the jetties today?"
But we can't quit now. So we packed it up and ran to another zip code up river.
First spot, had some nice current, but only Pinfish. We worked it feverishly too.
So we went to a last ditch spot. I managed a small Speck. Then made a slight adjustment, and found a bunch of small Yellowmouth Trout, and Kirk finally caught one decent keeper, and a few throw backs.
I know who had the "funk" on him, today! Mother River was paying him back for all the fish he's caught off of his rock during the week. And I was thrown a few bones, and I'm usually the one screamin', "I GOT BAIT TOO!"
So it was a frustrating day overall. But of course we had a blast out in the gloomy, nasty, cold weather. Can ya tell by the photo's that it was a perfect "winter day"?
Dark and grey without one glimpse of sun shine.
I know the fish are tough to catch in the 59 degree water.
Oh, the life of a Gator Trout hunter....it's a tough job sometimes. But it's not all that bad when ya have a guy like Kirk on the boat. Who always has an up beat attitude, mixed with killer instinct.
Can't wait to see the sun again. Because when I do and the Trout do too, it may not be good for their health and well being.
Here' it is again....a "here's yer sign"...
Look at that drop since the 16th when it was warm and sunny, and then 00 - GMT (greenwich mean time).
I'm no expert in this but I'd just contemplate that the fishing MAY be better when the Atmospheric pressure is steadier? Hmmmm...
