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It is not often that I am part of fishing trip during which more than 100 fish get caught. Today was one of those fortunate days. Two other kayak anglers -- On the Fly (Harry) and TXfly16 (Hugo) -- joined me on my center console "Small but Perky" to check out some spots south of the Bay Bridge that have produced well for me recently.
On the way out of Sandy Point, we saw Cowpokey and Snakehead Hunter fishing in the shallows just below the bridge. Snakehead Hunter had fished with me the previous week on the center console and knew where we were headed. We waved goodbye and headed to structure located in deep water. The wind was supposed to be about 6-8 knots from the north at 8:00 am with dropping wind speed during the morning. I felt comfortable launching a 16-ft boat into what I expected would be modest waves. However after traveling south for a few minutes we noticed the seas were building. They were strange waves that often were 3 ft high and did not run in the typical parallel rows. My boat is safe, but we had a bumpy ride.
After reaching our first spot, I felt some relief when Harry caught bluefish on each of his first few casts. Hugo and I soon followed. We made repeated drifts past structure catching more than 70 bluefish in the 12" to 15" range and a few small rockfish. I experimented with different lures to see how well I could catch the blues. I used 4 different metal spoons, including an antique Mepps spoon, to catch blues. I then broke out my box of excess "expendable" soft plastics and proceeded to catch fish on at least 10 different shapes, colors, and sizes of plastics. The other guys used a variety of lures too. After 90 minutes of steady catching we proceeded to another area where I have found hundreds of birds diving on bait over a broad area with about 20 ft depth for the past month. Typically these birds would dive down for 30-60 seconds, then take off to fly to another bait pod. It was challenging to find exactly where the predators were within casting range. We tried a variety of spots and were able to get more than 30 rockfish from 15" to 23.5". I jigged up several of the larger fish using a gold Stingsilver, but most of the fish were caught on soft plastic lures cast out and retrieved horizontally. I caught fish on at least 14 different lures this morning -- the fish were eager feeders.
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After 4 hours of fishing and catching, we turned north to return to port. By now the wind had dropped down so our run was considerably less bumpy than it had been throughout the morning. We covered over 18 miles today -- not far for boat fishing, but too much for my old body in a kayak. I intentionally did not identify the exact spots where we fished -- unless you are training for Iron Man events, they are not within realistic kayak access range from any public launches. Plus, the heavy seas we faced this morning would not have been pleasant in a kayak. Hugo told us this was his first fishing trip in the open bay. I tried to explain that a 100-fish day was not the norm, and that he should not expect that every time out. Harry took a lot of photos -- I hope he can add them later.
My next kayak fishing report will be from Tampa -- I have guided trips arranged from Thurs to Sun.
On the way out of Sandy Point, we saw Cowpokey and Snakehead Hunter fishing in the shallows just below the bridge. Snakehead Hunter had fished with me the previous week on the center console and knew where we were headed. We waved goodbye and headed to structure located in deep water. The wind was supposed to be about 6-8 knots from the north at 8:00 am with dropping wind speed during the morning. I felt comfortable launching a 16-ft boat into what I expected would be modest waves. However after traveling south for a few minutes we noticed the seas were building. They were strange waves that often were 3 ft high and did not run in the typical parallel rows. My boat is safe, but we had a bumpy ride.
After reaching our first spot, I felt some relief when Harry caught bluefish on each of his first few casts. Hugo and I soon followed. We made repeated drifts past structure catching more than 70 bluefish in the 12" to 15" range and a few small rockfish. I experimented with different lures to see how well I could catch the blues. I used 4 different metal spoons, including an antique Mepps spoon, to catch blues. I then broke out my box of excess "expendable" soft plastics and proceeded to catch fish on at least 10 different shapes, colors, and sizes of plastics. The other guys used a variety of lures too. After 90 minutes of steady catching we proceeded to another area where I have found hundreds of birds diving on bait over a broad area with about 20 ft depth for the past month. Typically these birds would dive down for 30-60 seconds, then take off to fly to another bait pod. It was challenging to find exactly where the predators were within casting range. We tried a variety of spots and were able to get more than 30 rockfish from 15" to 23.5". I jigged up several of the larger fish using a gold Stingsilver, but most of the fish were caught on soft plastic lures cast out and retrieved horizontally. I caught fish on at least 14 different lures this morning -- the fish were eager feeders.
002.jpg
After 4 hours of fishing and catching, we turned north to return to port. By now the wind had dropped down so our run was considerably less bumpy than it had been throughout the morning. We covered over 18 miles today -- not far for boat fishing, but too much for my old body in a kayak. I intentionally did not identify the exact spots where we fished -- unless you are training for Iron Man events, they are not within realistic kayak access range from any public launches. Plus, the heavy seas we faced this morning would not have been pleasant in a kayak. Hugo told us this was his first fishing trip in the open bay. I tried to explain that a 100-fish day was not the norm, and that he should not expect that every time out. Harry took a lot of photos -- I hope he can add them later.
My next kayak fishing report will be from Tampa -- I have guided trips arranged from Thurs to Sun.
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