Had Robert and his grandfather out today. Robert was 16 years old, and his Pop's was from Baton Rouge, La.
Louisiana, the World Series of Speckled Trout fishing and only second to them is, everything else. When talking inshore fishing.
No trout here worth going after. So I tried my best to get young Robert on as many monster Redbass as I could. The slow tide would be a major factor.
First thing we needed, Bait. Keeping my ear to the VHF radio. They were reported to be out deep past the jetties. So we blasted out there and yes, there was an acre of them. Someone said they saw Tarpon rolling in those deep schools. But I didn't see any. And I was right there. But we tried a few drifts through them with Pogies on a few floats.
It would be "too much" like the good ole days to pull up to a pogie pod and start hooking Tarpon. So we headed back to the jetties.
We had no less than 4 really big fish hooked up. But each one either came off the hook or broke the 40 pound leaders right at the swivel every time. We actually had I.G. - instantaneous gratification. Because we weren't on location 10 minutes when the first rod bender came, while dropping pogies to the bottom some 50 feet below.
Frustrated, I picked up anchor and headed down river. The same spot "again" I tried where the twin 35 pounders came from about 10 days ago. All we had there was Bluefish eating our baits....the green scourge fish are back!
So we picked up and headed back to the jetties once again.
It didn't take all that long and we were back into the fish that gave us a 2 second thrill.....the rod bounces, bends over, drag smokes and then a broke leader. All I could think was that it was Sharks. The area was alive with threadfin herring, and small Spanish Mackerel jumping all over the place.
We saw a few Tarpon back come out of the water, so they were definately there. When the rod doubles over and I see a Tarpon about 50-70 pounds go flying threw the air. Grandpa's, hooked up! But as the fish came toward the boat it got off the hook.
Next up, was young Robert on a Nurse Shark. That kicked his butt so bad Grandpa had to finish the job.
The action started to slow as the tide started to slow down. We were only going to have decent current so long today. When there's hardly 4 feet of tide in the St. Johns be prepared for no water movemement.
FINALLY, a rod bowed over I set the hook and made sure this fish was on and stayed on. And it was finally our targeted species, a over sized Redbass. But Grandpa was on the rod. So he made quick work of what was clearly a Redbass.
