Hmmm, it was nice and calm at the boat ramp, hidden nicely behind the slight bluff from the S.E. wind blowing, obviously. Then, another buddy comes back, then another. Then the chit-chat of the 70' Party boats, talking about how choppy and white cappin it was. Oh well, thank goodness I'm an inshore guide is all I could think. But as my boys came down to the dock, I gave them the news. "It's gonna be a bit sporty fella's. But we'll head on out there and see for ourselves."
I went straight to where I wanted to fish. It was a culdron of white water, folding over. As I took the boat out of gear and drifted in the slop, waves would hit the side of the boat and fold on in. I constantly hear, "Geez, your boat has high sides..." as if having a safe gunnel heigth is like having herpes or something. As with many inshore boats out there today that are "shin knockers". I say to myself....."I just couldn't fish out of that, let alone do charters." Been there done that....actually. And now know better.
It was bad, but I had a suspicion that as the tide rose it would lay down some. So we went to a spot that's the perfect comfy cozy fishin' hole. Not much goes on here, but it's easy anchoring, easy fishing, easy standing, and would be great if the fish knew how comfortable of a spot it was for "US", so we could catch'em. But it doesn't work that way. Not in my world. We weren't there long when we had two back to back hook-ups with swings and a miss. Almost caught fish. Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe there's a few here. But after an hour.....zip! Till I was ready to say, "LETS GO". And that's when a float goes down, a hook is set and a drag is peeling line.
We see it, but we also saw one small turtle after another. Some one yells, "it's a a turtle!!" Only problem with that is the small sea turtles around here, don't peel line off the spool, don't bow over a rod like that and certainly don't put up a gamefish type fight. It's a BIG Redbass! And it came to kick some ass, too.
At 29 something inches it was what we came fishing for. So the game was back on again. Re-bait and get out out there. But that was it. No other bites. So it was time to go check the washing machine one more time.
I won't get into a lot of details, because I just ate dinner, and am feeling kinda sleepy. Plus had a big day out there in the sun, and in the swells. But I can tell ya this......"If every Redbass that was hooked up, made it to the boat, the guys would have easily caught over 25 of them, easy." But many popped the leader, bent the hook, or just plain got off the small "live shrimp hooks", I use. But then again, light tackle gets BIT!
The guys dropped two Redbass into the fish box, out of alot caught and alot lost, up to 32-1/2". But that's the nature of fishing the BIG ROCKS. And they even caught a small Speckled Trout, a handful of Jack Crevalle and Ladyfish in between the Reds.
We fished till all but two shrimp out of 10 dozen were gone. Now that's a fine day. Like that yellow mustard in the Chinese resturants, that ya dip your egg roll in. It's not hot, it's exciting. That's what the jetties were today aboard the JETTYWOLF boat. "It wasn't rough out there....it was exciting!"
