I woke up yesterday morning with no intentions of going fishing. Not that I didn't want to but the winds have been blowing steady lately and I figured today would be no different.
Around 9:00AM I decided that I might go try some speckled trout fishing if it wasn't too windy.
So, I made my way into the office and went to the weather here on the fishing reports page. The forecast wasn't bad for Monday.
That caused me to pull up the few weather buoys that are still working offshore. At the buoy that is 250 NM SE of Charleston, which is about as close as we can get right now it showed a wave height of 1 foot every 7.7 seconds.
Well, I went numb!! Here it is beautiful offshore and I have messed around until it was nearly too late to go fishing!!
I immediately got on the phone and rounded up a few friends and we put this thing together at the last minute. I met up with John Leach, owner of DUTCHMAN CREEK BAIT & TACKLE, and one of our friends, Richard Croom. As I was at the tackle shop, another friend of mine, Capt. Steve Hinson had just landed his plane at the airport, which is beside the tackle shop, and I told him of our plans and invited him along with us.
We finally got on our way around 12:30PM. I made our way to the #1 Tower reef some 24 miles offshore. As I expected, it did not show much, I never find much on this reef, about 2 more miles is the #2 Tower reef, this one I like best, I nearly always find fish on this one, this time was no exception.
We got anchored up on some fish, I checked my tide watch, and saw that we had about two hours until the tide went slack, that was perfect, that's about all the time we had to fish if we didn't want to come home in the dark, and we didn't want to, because, for two reasons, one, when the sun goes down this time of year it gets cold on the water and second, it's just dangerous to run when you can't see what's in the water that you might run over!!!
We all started off like gangbusters, but as the years have a tendency to do, after the first hour, John and I, the two oldest, were feeling the effects of our years and were forced to take a break from the fishing.
The moral of this report is as I have said so many times before, this time of year you have to be ready to go at a moments notice. You never know when the weather will give you a break!!
For no longer than we got to fish, and we didn't have a mate on board to keep us bait cut up and to take our fish off, we caught some nice black bass and a pile of vermillion snappers which all fell short of the 12 inch size limit and check out the big Tautog that Steve caught and is holding up in the picture.
Steve had just hooked a big fish before that and when he hooked it, he thought he was hung up then it started swimming off. We never got to see what it was before it broke the 50 lb. test line. We figured it a shark, but it didn't really fight like a shark, but, we'll never know!! When he hooked the Tautog, he said, here we go again, but this one was easier to get up.
This trip was just what we all needed to ease a case of "cabin fever". Weather looks bad for rest of the week, but, as it so often does like yesterday, it can change at a moments notice. Now I can go to the FISHERMAN'S POST FISHING SCHOOL this Saturday with a fishing story that didn't happen last year!
Till next time, FISH ON!
Capt Butch and "Private Bodie" the fish dog says, I got to go fishing yesterday for my 6th birthday present and even got some cheeseburger and scales in my hair and fish slime on my face, LIFE IS GOOD! |
