Location: St. Marks River, shore (no boat)
Specific Location(s): San Marcos de Apalache Historic State Park
So, I was sitting online thinking about going fishing this past weekend so I took a look at the weather for my winter fishing locations and noticed it would be near 70F on Sunday. HOLY CRAP? 70F IN JANUARY? Yes please to fishing!
More after the jump, click "Read more" to well...read more?
So I called up BigGnarlyRed to see if he wanted to join me in going down to St. Marks River to try for Redfish and Spotted Seatrout before the weather turned and trout season closed (1st of February). He agreed to join me as long as we didn't get a super early start, which I was down for because, being a native Floridian, going early meant being in the cold and screw the cold.
Picked up BGR around 10am, Sunday, Jan. 30th and we headed down towards the coast and the little fishing village of St. Marks. After some misadventures on the way there involving an ice machine that sang "Ice Ice Baby" and a forgotten purchase of bait, we finally made it to the state park on the edge of town to start fishing. Initially we went to the point where the St. Marks and Wakulla Rivers' converge before flowing out to the Apalachee Bay and the Gulf of Mexico; I call this Old Fort because it is where the original Spanish fort was located.
As this was an absolutely wonderful and gorgeous day, there was heavy boat traffic moving up and down both rivers. This made it very difficult to fish from the location of the Old Fort as the St. Marks narrows slightly before merging with the Wakulla and the boat traffic was, as mentioned, HEAVY. Eventually we gave up on that spot after losing a couple of leaders, couple ounces of lead, and hooks on the heavy rock bottom of the area.
We drove down the road to the city park, which had something of a dock and was located up the Wakulla River about 200 yards. After tossing out a standard bottom rig (look for a future post about what I consider a standard bottom rig) using a whole dead shrimp as bait, well, we didn't have to wait long to get some action. Within a minute or two the rod tip was twitching and the excitement built as I waited for whatever was out there to take the bait and put a bend in the rod.
WHAM! A "big" hit and the rod is bent, no line being taken though, so can't be all that big. Start reeling and there is almost no resistance; not a good sign. Finally gets close enough to see a flash of silver and then it breaks the water...*&*#*&^%*($&# LADY FISH! That ticked me off, but after 3+ hours I was glad to catch something and at least Ladyfish jump and dance around. As I was unhooking him, he of course, shat all over my shoes and the dock so I was feeling a bit vindictive and decided his best use would be as cut bait for Redfish and tossed his ass in the cooler.
About this time, BGR's rod was starting twitch as well and then bend and shake and woah, somewhat serious fish on the line! There was some serious headshaking going on and the fish stayed down, never surfaced leading us to think "small red? please don't be a damn catfish!" We could tell the fish wasn't big, but was significantly heavier and larger than the 10" ladyfish I had just caught and as BGR worked it towards the dock, I prepared to help land and unhook.
w00t! Not a ladyfish, catfish or other undesirable, but a small Redfish, maybe 12-14" long. Too small to legally keep, so we got a picture and released it back to grow to a size that we could harvest it. Redfish need to be at least 18 inches long and no more than 27 inches long in order to keep them. Also, only one per person per day harvest is allowed in an effort to maintain fish stocks. Small ones like me ones we ran into on this particular day are known as Puppy Reds or Spot Tail Mullet (refering to how tasty these small, but now illegal, redfish are when cooked, calling them a Spot Tail Mullet is a joking way of saying you should keep the undersize fish)
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| BigGnarlyRed's puppy red |
The day is getting better, but we are running low on dead shrimp as bait and the little Reds were not interested at all in the cut Ladyfish I was presenting to them. We started using parts of shrimp instead of whole dead shrimp; this had no effect on the fish as they were more than willing to eat anything we threw out there...except the chunks of cut Ladyfish.
We were having fun, catching small ladyfish after small ladyfish but not another Red for a while, which was getting to us and the bait supply. It was also getting late in the day and storm clouds were moving in on the western horizon. I decided to go for broke and loaded up three small shrimp on my hook (half of our remaining supply) and tossed the bait out there as hard as I could, almost reaching the main river channel. It didn't take long before there was a decent bend in the rod and quite a bit of headshake.
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| Future nom noms |
) managed to capture both spots and the beautiful blue fringe on the tail. This fish is not quite as small as it looks, BGR is a big dude and you gotta love his treasure map tattoo of Florida on the forearm, making the fish look even smaller than it really was; still only about 12 inches long though :-pAfter this we decided to call it a day as I had a splitting headache, storms were moving in, and BGR was thinking about chicken wings and beer from Corner Pocket Sports Bar (my favorite haunt, but the headache was telling me "No drinky for you tonight!"). Not bad for the first trip of the year, but no follow up recipe/cooking post as we didn't catch anything we could (legally) keep and cook. That being said, it was better than cleaning my apartment (previous plan for the day) and was a really nice day, especially for late January.
TL;DR Went fishin, caught nothin worthwhile.
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