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What a day! Great time with a bunch of hardcore anglers. It was hovering around 30ºf air with 40ºf water temps at 7am. I counted a dozen kayaks, but might have missed some...I used up my fingers and toes, then used ears, couldn't count higher than 12 on this subject.
It started off with a note on the fridge from my wife ("yobo" is Korean for "spouse"). She made me sandwiches in the middle of the night when she got home from work, love her.
We got to Triton before 7am, apparently the gate was already open at 6:30am, so we were all able to drive down to the launch and rig.
MOC getting set up:
Goody hiding from the cold and putting his phone in the waterproof case:
Half of the fleet ready for launch at 7am. Right about the time I took this picture, Goody said, "Birds, lets go!"
Goody heading in to the birds, at around 7:30am:
To give an idea how many birds we're talking about, they are hard to miss:
My first double produced a 20"er, this was at about 7:35am. The other fish of that double was 18.25", I threw them both back. I had made up my mind that it was going to be easy to get a limit of 22"+...more on that later.
Goody in the birds, shortly all of his rods will be hooked up. I don't know how many times he got "quads" today, but it was a lot. This is the last picture I took for about an hour and a half, it was solid fish on from that point. I was calling out "fish #?" over and over, in reality those calls should have been "double #?". I had about 20 double hook ups today and easily landed over 50 fish...maybe closer to 60. I'll let Goody chime in on his number, it was higher. I was landing lots and lots of fish, many of them in the 18-19" range and thew those all back too. I was sure everyone was going to have a limit by now if they were keeping them. The action was hot and heavy until the boats came. It took the boats about an hour of running over the birds until the fish were push out and the birds left all together. Then all of the boats, almost in unison, departed in all different directions.
The fishing really shut down, so everyone started searching. Goody, myself and a few others when north the mouth of the South River, MOC and the rest of the fleet went south to the mouth of the Rhode River. MOC called out that the birds were at the Rhode, so those of us up north turned around and peddled our tails off to get back south. When we finally got there the wind had all but quit and the water got completely flat.
Redfish jigging blind.
It stayed calm for about an hour, then the wind turned south and it started getting a little bit bumpy, but nothing too bad.
My stringer was still empty at this point, I probably released 20 legal size fish before 11am. I thought for sure I was going home empty handed as the bite was so slow Goody put a parachute (Alabama) rig on. You know it's bad when Goody had already caught over 60 fish and gets desperate enough to pull a parachute. We kept trolling around the area where all the action had been when the birds were working, and it finally happened. One of my rods bent over hard, and I knew I had a fish on worthy of the stringer. It put up a really good fight and when it hit the Hawg Trough it was a FAT 22". Relief, I have a good fish to take home.
That was the last legal fish I caught. The wind kept building, and after Goody and I peddled to the channel marker in the mouth of the Rhode, we turned and started back to the launch, tired and ready for some lunch. All in all another great day of fishing.
It started off with a note on the fridge from my wife ("yobo" is Korean for "spouse"). She made me sandwiches in the middle of the night when she got home from work, love her.
We got to Triton before 7am, apparently the gate was already open at 6:30am, so we were all able to drive down to the launch and rig.
MOC getting set up:
Goody hiding from the cold and putting his phone in the waterproof case:
Half of the fleet ready for launch at 7am. Right about the time I took this picture, Goody said, "Birds, lets go!"
Goody heading in to the birds, at around 7:30am:
To give an idea how many birds we're talking about, they are hard to miss:
My first double produced a 20"er, this was at about 7:35am. The other fish of that double was 18.25", I threw them both back. I had made up my mind that it was going to be easy to get a limit of 22"+...more on that later.
Goody in the birds, shortly all of his rods will be hooked up. I don't know how many times he got "quads" today, but it was a lot. This is the last picture I took for about an hour and a half, it was solid fish on from that point. I was calling out "fish #?" over and over, in reality those calls should have been "double #?". I had about 20 double hook ups today and easily landed over 50 fish...maybe closer to 60. I'll let Goody chime in on his number, it was higher. I was landing lots and lots of fish, many of them in the 18-19" range and thew those all back too. I was sure everyone was going to have a limit by now if they were keeping them. The action was hot and heavy until the boats came. It took the boats about an hour of running over the birds until the fish were push out and the birds left all together. Then all of the boats, almost in unison, departed in all different directions.
The fishing really shut down, so everyone started searching. Goody, myself and a few others when north the mouth of the South River, MOC and the rest of the fleet went south to the mouth of the Rhode River. MOC called out that the birds were at the Rhode, so those of us up north turned around and peddled our tails off to get back south. When we finally got there the wind had all but quit and the water got completely flat.
Redfish jigging blind.
It stayed calm for about an hour, then the wind turned south and it started getting a little bit bumpy, but nothing too bad.
My stringer was still empty at this point, I probably released 20 legal size fish before 11am. I thought for sure I was going home empty handed as the bite was so slow Goody put a parachute (Alabama) rig on. You know it's bad when Goody had already caught over 60 fish and gets desperate enough to pull a parachute. We kept trolling around the area where all the action had been when the birds were working, and it finally happened. One of my rods bent over hard, and I knew I had a fish on worthy of the stringer. It put up a really good fight and when it hit the Hawg Trough it was a FAT 22". Relief, I have a good fish to take home.
That was the last legal fish I caught. The wind kept building, and after Goody and I peddled to the channel marker in the mouth of the Rhode, we turned and started back to the launch, tired and ready for some lunch. All in all another great day of fishing.
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