AFW

By Jason
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Saturday, June 28, 2008
" A Couple Of Odd-Ball Occurrences Today  "

Well Karla and Amber stayed up pretty late into the night, and when they went to bed I woke up.  Looking for something to do I decided it would be good to get out on the water again.  So Spike and I got ready, and we left land at 11:10am.

We headed to the SE side of Picnic Island where there was obvious schools of bait.  A few casts of the net yielded lots of 2 inch shiners with about 2% of the catch being 1.5 inch pinfish.

Then we headed to Sanibel Causeway Span C.  There was lots of surface activity there.  I assume it was bait fish but was never able to identify what was splashing.  I caught a few small crab.  A boat about 200 yards away caught something dark about 20 inches or so.  But unable to catch any fish here, I decided to drift fish in the outbound tide from this span.  

It was very quiet for an hour or so while drifting.  I had a crab out on the big-boy pole.  A while later, however, at one point I was absolutely startled when no more than 10 feet from the boat a big "fish with wings" broke through the surface and was traveling toward the boat.  It was one of those shocking moments to be honest!  I am not sure what the fish was but I would estimate it to be about 6 feet long, and about 5 feet across from "wingtip to wingtip".  It also did not appear to be a manta ray because it had some unusual linear patterns on it.  I only saw it for about a second.  I don't think it was a sawfish but it may have been.

A while later I caught this:

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2:52pm

Then this:

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3:55pm

The crabs ended up getting their legs apparently bitten off, then eventually the body too.  But I never was able to hook anything on that big boy pole.

I also caught a couple of catfish.

Then it was peaceful again until all of a sudden my oldest most beatup rod was pulled out of its rod holder and went flying over my head.  I watched in stiff surprise as it was pulled away straight as an arrow just below the surface.  At that time my prescription glasses with sunshade attachment fell from my head and I caught it just above the waterline next to the boat.  We were in about 10 feet of water.  I attempted to chase the taken pole down, but those efforts proved to be futile.

We eventually drifted to the flats on the gulf side of Sanibel Causeway Span A, where I attempted to catch more bait.  Once again my glasses slipped off but this time fell in the water and settled on the bottom just right of the motor.  Luckily I was in 3 feet of clear water and was able to use a net to retrieve them.

I was back on land at about 6:50pm.  

The weather was remarkably dry all day although quite hazy.  After I got back is when the storms developed and moved in.

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