AFW

By Jason
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Monday, September 3, 2007 - Labor Day
"  I went through the Bermuda Triangle but got rewarded later.  "

I have been itchin' to go fishin' for weeks after not being out since June.  Today would be the final fishing opportunity of the 3 day holiday weekend.  But Amber was sick and Karla couldn't go!  So I would go by myself, something I rarely ever do.  I was also not feeling well, but that wouldn't stop me.

I left land right at noon and headed to the flats at Span A in search of bait.  On the way I noticed tons of surface jellyfish, mainly in the river.  The tide was a strong outgoing.  After a while, I found no bait, but entered what seemed to be the Bermuda Triangle.  I began having electrical problems that unexplainably caused the VHF, depth finder, and stereo to lose power at seemingly random times.  I troubleshot under the console and even with troubleshooting, results just didn't add up.  I am no dummy when it comes to electricity, but I was stumped.  Anyway, I somehow stabilized that problem and moved on in search of bait.  Still no bait but I reentered the Bermuda Triangle, and how I know this is because the problem started all over again.  After replacing a section of wire, I believe I found that the circuit breaker was the culprit.  No further anomalies for the remainder of the trip.

Now it is about 2pm and I still have found no bait.  So I headed to the lighthouse but found the beach loaded with people, so chumming for bait would be out of the question.  I moved a few hundred yards offshore and chummed a bit but nothing.  However, I did find this threatening looking jellyfish with tentacles about 2 feet or so in length:

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2:21pm

Still desperately in search of self-caught bait I went over to the canals near Sanibel Marina and bing, bait!  I loaded up with about 25 pieces and now I could go fishing.

So I headed to Span B and by this time the tide was slowly incoming.  I set my lines and set back, watching an approaching storm from the north.  Then all of a sudden, fish on!:

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4:12pm
A 17 inch Gag Grouper.

But I couldn't stay there because of the impeding thunderstorm.  Seatow was saying on the radio that it was a massive storm and to head to Pine Island Sound for cover.  So after some time, I headed straight for York Island and fished a bit, picking up a catfish.  The storm looked to have passed so I headed back to Span B.  With the tide still incoming I set out the catfish tail and doubled up bait fish one of the other poles.  After getting tangled on the bottom numerous times, I started casting more toward the underside of the new span.  Previously I was casting to the east side of the new span, where the old span had been removed.  I must have been getting caught up on concrete debris on the bottom.  My catfish tail was lost to the bottom, so i put on the catfish head and sent it out.  Twice I got the infamous zzzzzzzzzzzzz sound but not able to hook anything.  There were teeth marks in the catfish head, however.  Soon, with the other pole I hooked up on this little guy:

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6:02pm

Well it was slow going after that and getting late in the day so I headed home.

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6:34pm

I arrived back on land about 7:00pm.

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