Wednesday, March 25, 2009

3/25 - Non-Gloomy day

I knew I had a very short time before the S.E. wind would start to blow. And I barely made it out with enough time to catch anything before it did.

But on my first pitch of the float up to the jetty docks, I caught this nice 17" Trout.

















It was super nice on the river as long as the tide was flooding, and the wind wasn't a sustained 20 knots. This is what it looked like as I left the boat ramp around 8:30am.














After that first Trout, I made another pitch to the same spot and caught another Speck. Two casts, two fish. But the tide was high and just about to turn. I knew this good fortune was gonna be short lived. Because where I was anchored is all about rising tide, and as soon as it falls a bit as the turn around happens. It's usually all over. And that's pretty much what did happen.

I caught one more Trout. And then it seemed like all the bites just quit. If you're not in tune with what's happening every single minute while your out there. And have a lackadaisical approach, I believe your just wasting your time. So I said to myself, "I'll give it 10 more minutes or so and see."

I made a cast back up near where my first trout came from, and as my float drifted back toward me, it went down and I had me a rod bender. A 28" Redbass.
I had very short patience today. So after the Redbass, I moved on because the tide was now falling and if I wasn't going to get bit, I was gone!

So I headed to another spot at the jetties. And after pulling up there I could tell I was going to get a perfect "boat" drift right down the rocks. Hmmmm...I'm all about covering ground. So I turned off the engine and just drifted slowly right along the rocks.

I pitched a Jig-N-Shrimp. And believe it or not, for about 30 minutes I didn't get a single bite.
So I switch over to my float-rig rod, set my depth at 14 feet and again made casts to the rocks to about 16 feet deep.

The wind drifted the boat one way, and the tide drifted my float the opposite. After about 3 drifts of boat and float, my line came tight my float disappeared. And I was in a serious drag burning tug-a-war with some kind of monster. Probably a really big Redbass.

As hard as I pulled, the fish pulled harder and straight down the jetty. I high-sticked my rod so to get a taller angle on my line so to keep it out of the rocks. But it didn't matter. The fish broke me off. Well, that was a fun 30 seconds!

I got tired of drifting the boat so I went back and anchored up along the rocks and pitched my float. For one hour I sat there drifting a frisky live shrimp down the jetties and never had a single bite....actually I went through 3 shrimp, because they just died of pure boredom.

I find that almost unbelievable, but believable. Like a switch, here came the wind that seemed to shut down the bite. A falling tide gets "bucked" by any direction with East in it. So that's probably why.

The wind was pretty damn strong making almost everywhere, non float-fishable.
But I did have a spot that was out of the wind, right in Mayport. Gotta remember, I have to limit where I go. I can't afford to run all over. Keeping it close to the boat ramp is the whole idea.

So, I pulled up to a protected spot. Float fished, nothing. Threw out two bottom rigs, nothing. So I packed it up and headed home.

Oh well, soon enough this wind direction will be over. I really needed to get an early start, today.