A Little Fishing Before The Big Wind

2.12.15

Water Temp: 54 degrees

Thursday morning arrived with a tinge of spring in the air.  A predicted cold from was to come raging through with high winds in the afternoon.

We decided to hit the river before it arrived to see if we could get our rods bent.

I headed over to Port Royal and picked up some mud minnows for Nancy and I also left with a pocket of new Pearl White Gulp Shrimp.  Old reliable baits.

We eased over to the red hole and the wind was humming down the bank quite well.  Well enough that the hookd over my head felt pretty good.

We eased down the shore and I finally flushed a school of puppy reds.  It was soon after that I had back to back slot redfish in the boat.  Both inhaled the recently purchased gulp on a 1/8 oz. jig head.

Soon Nancy jerked and stated "I missed one", as I looked down and saw her line heading up stream, I said "I don't think so".  She proceeded to catch up to her fish and brought him boat side with a nicked gill plate.

I quickly cut the line and he swam off to recover from the battle.

As the tide got up to the edge of the weeds the bite slacked off.  Again we headed to the trout hole but no trout there for the 4th time in a row.  

The water temp keeps heading up so hopefully spring will arrive soon, although the coming week's weather forecast doesn't look like it has any "spring" mentioned in it.

The Big And Little Of It

1.31.15

Water Temp  52 deg

Well, it has been a while for a post.

The truth of the matter is that it has gotten quite cold and windy.
Nancy and I made one trip out a couple of weeks ago and flushed a large group of reds, but didn't get any action in a four hour period.  The water temp had gotten to 49 degrees.

I had added a new depth finder and impeller to the tin boat over the past couple of weeks.

Hunter was coming down from C town to golf and super bowl.  We had a brief period of time when the tide was right Saturday afternoon to possible limber up our casting arms.

Actually I thought that possibly we could get on something.  When I walked Miette in the morning there was a lot of activity at the dock as cormorants, loons, great blue herons and dolphin were really eating in the back yard.

We eased over to our red hole and Hunter immediately rolled a red on the Sure Ketch jig, only to see it come unbuttoned in a swirl in the shallow water.

Soon, he was hooked up again and brought an nice 16 1/2" fish boat side.  The red was deposited in the cooler due to the fact that the Chandler household was without fresh fish in the freezer for the first time this year.

We continued to work our oyster shell strewn stretch, seeing fish move here and there, but couldn't get hooked up.  I thought possibly that my Gulp jerk shad was moving too quickly for these cold water fish, so I switched over to a glow gulp shrimp on a 1/8 oz. jig head.

I had cast and was fussing with the trolling motor.  The gulp was just laying on the bottom.

As I got the trolling motor positioned the way I wanted it, I picked up on my motionless bait only to feel that soft resistance.  I set the hook and a bottom of the slot redfish came aboard.  OK, I get the hint.  Slow d-o-w-n.

We also started seeing more fish trying to enter the small creek we were camped on.

I cast back to an approaching school and got bit again as the red came loose in the shallow water before Hunter got garroted by my Power Pro line.

A few casts later and a top of the slot red slammed the gulp.  After a nice battle in the shallow water he came aboard.  

We watched the school move in and out, but they had lost their eating interest.

Hunter and I eased back to the ramp, happy that we got some winter protein in the cooler.