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Me and the crew headed down to Kiptopeke for our lil weekend adventure. The plan was to kayak fish as much as possible. Unfortunately, high winds and a few thunderstorms had other plans in mind. But don't be mistaken...we had a heck of a weekend! It was myself, Grady Black, Mytmouse, & Foursteps24.
We got to the area around 11:30am or so on Friday. We stopped at Chris' Bait & Tackle to stock up on some bait, and to get a fishing report, and perhaps some tips & advice. Well get got the bait (frozen clams, frozen peelers, frozen squid...luckily we had some good BW from our local shop at home)...but the lady didn't have much else to offer. It felt as if we were more of a annoyance than a customer. She pretty much said that we wouldn't be able to catch anything because of the previous weather they've had. Ok lady, thanks.
Anyway, we checked in to our camp site and immediately got to business. The first order of the day was to fish the concrete ships. We got all rigged up at the ramp and made our way to the ships. Not having ever fished here before, it was an intriguing sight. This journey was epic, as mytmouse had the first test run of his trolling motor setup. It was a huge success. He did a nifty job of rigging.
We began fishing the tail end of the incoming tide. We drifted the park-side of the north ships. I had one bottom rig set up with shrimp. My other rod was setup for flounder...bucktail with a gulp minnow, and a fat chunk of bloodworm. The first couple of drifts yielded small black seabass. Little bait thieves! I also caught a few scup/porgy. We spread out an canvassed the area. On my 3rd or 4th drift, I hooked into a 9"-ish black sea bass, caught on the shrimp. As I was unhooking him, my bait runner began buzzing at me. At first I thought I was snagged...which happened on previous drifts. THe line was peeling off way faster than my drift though. FISH ON!!! After setting the hook, the battle was on. My yelling caught the attention of my buddies...and probably people on the pier too. Foursteps and GradyBlack were first on the scene. I was bowed up! Finally I got the fish to the surface. Much to my delight, it was a BIG flounder. This was my first time fishing for, and catching a keeper flounder. With no landing net, I grabbed the leader as the fish thrashed, and hauled him in the boat. I swear there was a moment where I just KNEW I was gonna lose him. It was a 23.5" beauty.
My adrenaline was at an all time high. GB was there to help me get him secured. I said "just give me a minute so I can calm down" lol. It was nuts. I continued fishing...drifting north. Then I heard Mytmouse screaming & yelling lol. He got a nice 18.5" flattie! In the cooler it went!
A while later, we heard the yelling and hollering from foursteps! Something inhaled his bucktail!!! FISH ON!!
EPIC FAIL!! This was a BIG letdown!! But it was funny at the same time.
That was the end of notable action for this outing.
Our next outing was slated to be a meet-up at HRBT that night. With weather being NOT GOOD, we decided to not waste a drive & toll for nothing. After reading tufnik's report...I'm glad we didn't take that drive. We opted to hit the ships again for an easy local trip. Well mother nature had other plans for us. As we hit the ramp, a sizable thunderstorm made its presence known in the distance. Cancel that! We fished the pier until the storm arrived. I can't quite recall, but I dont think we caught anything at the pier that night. But we only fished for less than 30 minutes before being chased out.
Friday night was a wash. We hunkered down in our tents as we rode out the thunderstorm.
Saturday morning...WINDY :-/ We sought protected waters to avoid being tossed & turned in our yaks. We hit up a back creek, marsh area near a canal. It was in the wildlife refuge.
We tossed artificials for a few hours, in search of any specks on this side of town. No such luck. But I did catch foursteps' hat as we transported my yak back to my car lol..
Throwback.
Saturday afternoon, we fished the pier. People were catching croaker here and there. Again, the water was choppy due to a 10+mph wind. (Despite the forecast calling for 5-8mph..) I spoke to tufnik and he mentioned going to Rudee Inlet, which he said was protected. We decided to stay on the pier. Good thing we did. We ended up fishing in the hot corner of the pier. Everyone was catching....except for me for a while. At one point, I cast my bait, and walked back to the car for something. "Watch my rod for me....I aint catching $hit though..." Those were my famous last words. You know where this is going. Luckily mytmouse saved my rod, as it was horizontal on its way over the rail thanks to a 17" freight train croaker. That was the first fish to bite anything I had to offer. Go figure.
As the evening progressed, the croaker action got HOT. I switched to a smaller rod, as the fish were in close. Underhand flip casts got you right into the zone as the night progressed. This was the most action I've had on a pier in SOOOOO long. Reminds me of my pre-kayak days. The grade of croaker here were ridiculous. 14"+ for most of our croaker...easily. Three at the 17" mark. Few 15-16 inchers. Between us, we filled up two coolers. Hot bait was uhm...everything except BW. Squid, clam, shrimp, peeler crab all worked well. Clam & squid seemed to get slammed the hardest by the bigger croaker. Mixed in were sea robin, black sea bass, couple of eels. Later in the night, a school of black drum came thru. All small.
We fished until almost midnight. We had enough, so we called it quits. This pier outing made up for mother nature working against our kayak plans. This morning, we had breakfast at camp, then hit the road at 11am. We toyed with the idea of fishing, but it was again windy 15mph...so we said eff it, and made our way back north.
It was a great time. Kiptopeke is a nice park. They are sure to nickle and dime you for EVERYTHING too though. Our camp site was $68 for two nights (Electric & water. Regular sites were a lil bit cheaper). Wanna launch on the boat ramp? Extra $7 please. (beach is free though). Wanna fish on the pier? Extra $3 please. Police & MRC made their presence known as well.
Attached below are more pics from the trip.
We got to the area around 11:30am or so on Friday. We stopped at Chris' Bait & Tackle to stock up on some bait, and to get a fishing report, and perhaps some tips & advice. Well get got the bait (frozen clams, frozen peelers, frozen squid...luckily we had some good BW from our local shop at home)...but the lady didn't have much else to offer. It felt as if we were more of a annoyance than a customer. She pretty much said that we wouldn't be able to catch anything because of the previous weather they've had. Ok lady, thanks.
Anyway, we checked in to our camp site and immediately got to business. The first order of the day was to fish the concrete ships. We got all rigged up at the ramp and made our way to the ships. Not having ever fished here before, it was an intriguing sight. This journey was epic, as mytmouse had the first test run of his trolling motor setup. It was a huge success. He did a nifty job of rigging.
We began fishing the tail end of the incoming tide. We drifted the park-side of the north ships. I had one bottom rig set up with shrimp. My other rod was setup for flounder...bucktail with a gulp minnow, and a fat chunk of bloodworm. The first couple of drifts yielded small black seabass. Little bait thieves! I also caught a few scup/porgy. We spread out an canvassed the area. On my 3rd or 4th drift, I hooked into a 9"-ish black sea bass, caught on the shrimp. As I was unhooking him, my bait runner began buzzing at me. At first I thought I was snagged...which happened on previous drifts. THe line was peeling off way faster than my drift though. FISH ON!!! After setting the hook, the battle was on. My yelling caught the attention of my buddies...and probably people on the pier too. Foursteps and GradyBlack were first on the scene. I was bowed up! Finally I got the fish to the surface. Much to my delight, it was a BIG flounder. This was my first time fishing for, and catching a keeper flounder. With no landing net, I grabbed the leader as the fish thrashed, and hauled him in the boat. I swear there was a moment where I just KNEW I was gonna lose him. It was a 23.5" beauty.
My adrenaline was at an all time high. GB was there to help me get him secured. I said "just give me a minute so I can calm down" lol. It was nuts. I continued fishing...drifting north. Then I heard Mytmouse screaming & yelling lol. He got a nice 18.5" flattie! In the cooler it went!
A while later, we heard the yelling and hollering from foursteps! Something inhaled his bucktail!!! FISH ON!!
EPIC FAIL!! This was a BIG letdown!! But it was funny at the same time.
That was the end of notable action for this outing.
Our next outing was slated to be a meet-up at HRBT that night. With weather being NOT GOOD, we decided to not waste a drive & toll for nothing. After reading tufnik's report...I'm glad we didn't take that drive. We opted to hit the ships again for an easy local trip. Well mother nature had other plans for us. As we hit the ramp, a sizable thunderstorm made its presence known in the distance. Cancel that! We fished the pier until the storm arrived. I can't quite recall, but I dont think we caught anything at the pier that night. But we only fished for less than 30 minutes before being chased out.
Friday night was a wash. We hunkered down in our tents as we rode out the thunderstorm.
Saturday morning...WINDY :-/ We sought protected waters to avoid being tossed & turned in our yaks. We hit up a back creek, marsh area near a canal. It was in the wildlife refuge.
We tossed artificials for a few hours, in search of any specks on this side of town. No such luck. But I did catch foursteps' hat as we transported my yak back to my car lol..
Throwback.
Saturday afternoon, we fished the pier. People were catching croaker here and there. Again, the water was choppy due to a 10+mph wind. (Despite the forecast calling for 5-8mph..) I spoke to tufnik and he mentioned going to Rudee Inlet, which he said was protected. We decided to stay on the pier. Good thing we did. We ended up fishing in the hot corner of the pier. Everyone was catching....except for me for a while. At one point, I cast my bait, and walked back to the car for something. "Watch my rod for me....I aint catching $hit though..." Those were my famous last words. You know where this is going. Luckily mytmouse saved my rod, as it was horizontal on its way over the rail thanks to a 17" freight train croaker. That was the first fish to bite anything I had to offer. Go figure.
As the evening progressed, the croaker action got HOT. I switched to a smaller rod, as the fish were in close. Underhand flip casts got you right into the zone as the night progressed. This was the most action I've had on a pier in SOOOOO long. Reminds me of my pre-kayak days. The grade of croaker here were ridiculous. 14"+ for most of our croaker...easily. Three at the 17" mark. Few 15-16 inchers. Between us, we filled up two coolers. Hot bait was uhm...everything except BW. Squid, clam, shrimp, peeler crab all worked well. Clam & squid seemed to get slammed the hardest by the bigger croaker. Mixed in were sea robin, black sea bass, couple of eels. Later in the night, a school of black drum came thru. All small.
We fished until almost midnight. We had enough, so we called it quits. This pier outing made up for mother nature working against our kayak plans. This morning, we had breakfast at camp, then hit the road at 11am. We toyed with the idea of fishing, but it was again windy 15mph...so we said eff it, and made our way back north.
It was a great time. Kiptopeke is a nice park. They are sure to nickle and dime you for EVERYTHING too though. Our camp site was $68 for two nights (Electric & water. Regular sites were a lil bit cheaper). Wanna launch on the boat ramp? Extra $7 please. (beach is free though). Wanna fish on the pier? Extra $3 please. Police & MRC made their presence known as well.
Attached below are more pics from the trip.
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Funny thing is when we fished the pier Metroman and I were on the SW(right corner) casting our rods as far as we could. We thought we would get some surf fishing in so we had a lot of long stuff... We caught nothing.... 
We're standing there looking @ the guys to the left, including Foursteps24, kill them! We're like WTF? Using the same bait and everything... then an ol' timer told us, we were casting over the fish! We migrated to the left side and I did about a 30 foot lob, if that.... and BAM I was on em! LOL Metroman was the only one without a fish... he was mad about it too! Wouldn't laugh @ our jokes or anything! LMAO!!!! Oh I wish I had a pic of his sour face. So he walks off to get his coat or something with his rod still in the water and drag set to none. So while I am tightening the slack in my line I see his $189 Team Alabama rod get a BIG HIT!!! Then I saw the butt rise... and rise... and rise... I just barely grabbed it before it went over... LOL He still owes me for that save... Low and behold it was a 17" croaker! Fought like a beast too! I caught it so it was mine! LOL
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