AFW

By Jason
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Saturday, February 9, 2008
"  Lots of activity.  You gotta WORK it!  "

A few days ago the wife said "I wanna go fishing Saturday".  Well she didn't have to state that twice!  And there's no changing of the minds come Saturday! Also, it got cold and windy on Sunday so good thing we went.

We left land at 10:06am with the usual count of 4 fishing poles.  On board were Karla, Amber, Margarita (previously known as Ms. Rosa), Chino, and myself.  We headed straight for Picnic Island.  After a half hour of chumming and cast netting we were able to net well over 40 pieces of bait at about 20% pinfish and 80% greenbacks/shiners.  The bait was robust and lasted throughout the day with very few casualties.

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We moved on and anchored in San Carlos Bay very similar to Jan 27's outing on a strong incoming tide, and once again began catching numerous gag grouper.  Left and right I was pulling them up.  Unfortunately, Karla and Margarita were unable to make a catch for quite some time.  But as I kept saying, "you gotta WORK it!  That became a common phrase throughout the day.

I figured out that with the strong incoming tidal flow, and the belief that I needed to reach bottom (we were in 16 feet of water), I put 6 splitshots on my leader near the knot.  That was enough to get the bait down...and it worked:

11:52am	12:12pm	12:18pm
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6 minutes later, Karla made her debut catch of the day.  That's because she started to WORK IT!:

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12:24pm

And of course Chino was enjoying his time on the boat:

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12:30pm

Then I caught a snapper:

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12:47pm

and pop-pop-pop - another 3 gags right in a row:

12:51pm	1:17pm	1:22pm
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But by this time Margarita (with salt) still had not caught anything.  She wasn't WORKING IT!

The tide stopped, then the bite seemed to fizzle out for a while.  Then the tide began going outbound.

Finally, Karla made another catch:

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2:04pm

Then Margarita finally made her debut catch of the day:

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3:15pm

And to top it off Amber crossed Gag Grouper off of her species list with this performance:

3:24pm	3:25pm
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And the action continued:

3:36pm	3:43pm	3:53pm Karla caught a little Sand Perch.
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After this the bite got slow so around 4:50pm we began drifting out toward the light house, and I thought we could hook up with some small sharks.

Well I did hookup on a nice hammerhead, approximately 2.5 feet long, and I got him on the front deck, held by my foot.  At this point Karla ran to the back of the boat halfway terrified, and the shark twisted to the point I could not keep control of him, especially as his mouth twisted toward my left toes, and before I knew it he ended up back in the water before I could have a chance to pick him up and get a picture.  Darn!

Then we headed to the lighthouse for a restroom break.

At 5:50pm we began drifting outbound past the lighthouse ready for some more shark fishing, although typically we do not change our leaders even though I know that it is very easy for a shark to bite through the leader.  Remember, we are still leisure fisherpeople.

All of a sudden Margarita hooked onto something strong, and she was struggling to keep the rod in her hands!  She finally surrendered the rod by handing it off to Karla, and Karla began feverishly reeling it in, but the creature kept yanking line out.  I was pretty certain with that force that the 20lb power pro with 25lb leader was going to bust.  But what actually happened after about a minute of struggle, Karla was spooled.  Shucks!

Later, my line went zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz really fast and before I knew it my line was also spooled.  Now I understand the importance of putting a shock leader on the beginning of your reel.  I have never used shock leaders.  I believe this pole had 20lb power pro with 40lb leader.  But it spooled so fast that my pole went "chunk" in it's  holder.  So whatever took the bait it was big.

The final excitement of this outing would be when I used the big-boy rod and reel, and I was ready to hook the sand perch Karla had caught to the big octopus circle hook.   But I goofed and the fish slipped from my hands right into the sea.  So I used a tail from another fish.  I sent this out and after many false alarms because I was dragging bottom, I finally had the drag set just right.  We were getting ready to move and then, all of a sudden zzzzzzzzzz.....fish on!  I grabbed the pole and began a struggle with what seemed to be a rock at times, then seemed to be nothing.   This cycle repeated about 3 times - the creature would quickly but steadily move away pulling out drag, then it must have come right at us because the line was limp even while I reeled it in feverishly.  Then all of a sudden it would pull drag again!  It pulled away very smoothly - no pulsating at all like a small shark, or other small fish.  I thought it could be a big manta ray.  I worked it for several minutes until my 80lb leader  was bitten off.  Shucks!   I'm pretty sure it was a big shark.

After dark we went toward the Sanibel Causeway and ran a submersible green light in the water for about 30 minutes in effort to catch some more bait or maybe some shrimp like we had done on a previous outing.  But there was nothing to be caught.  So we headed home.

We were back on land by 8:26pm.  Another completely un-boring fishing outing!  This is the second trip that we have caught not a single catfish!!!   

Now I have a lot of work to do on three crippled fishing poles!

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