Fishing the Clinkers, October 10
Had the day off on Friday.
T-Dog got his boat running again, and we made a run into the Clinkers south of Oak Hill. We put the boat in at the last parking lot in Canaveral NS around 7:30, a little later than we’d hoped. Tooled out a bit to the sandholes and started throwing out topwater plugs. I hooked a 14 1/2 inch trout pretty quickly using a Gulp Shad on a Cajun Thunder rig. I’ve come to the conclusion that 14 1/2 inches is far too common a size for trout!
(Funny thing about the Cajun Thunder — the fish LOVE that bobber. I swear I got more hits on the bobber than the darn bait I dragged behind it. I switched over to topwaters (top dogs, little dogs), but couldn’t get anything to hit them! I might have to try to jerry-rig a treble hook onto the end of the Thunder (split ring should make it easy) and fish with both a plastic on the leader and a hook on the bobber itself!)
T-Dog hooked a little Jack Cravalle, and we both had plenty of action but nothing big enough, or hungry enough, to bite. We waded a bit around the islands just the south of the launch, and I hooked plenty of Grunts and a couple ladyfish jumped on my bait, but otherwise nothing worth our time. We went over to our usual spot in the Clinkers and got there just in time to be caught in a thunderstorm pushing west across the Atlantic. High winds on the wrong side of the lagoon in a small boat… no good. Tony told me stories about people drowning in two feet of water. He was in a dark mood…
We hid out for a long time on the leeward side of the islands, where the water was remarkably still considering the two- and three-foot waves splashing across the trough in the middle of the lagoon. I’ve never seen worse fishing than the leeward side of an island in a storm! Fishing with fresh shrimp, and still nothin’! When we first anchored on the island, I noticed a nose cutting across the inlet but figured it was just a manatee. About half an hour later, the dolphin surfaced again… Likely cause of the bad fishing. But a pretty spot, and we didn’t drown, so on the whole, not so bad.
When things calmed down we headed back to the eastern side of the lagoon and spotted a school of Reds but couldn’t get them to nibble. It was getting late, so we wrapped up the day fishing the same spots south of the landing where last week T-Dog caught five reds. The water was a bit turbid, the sun at the wrong angle, and the wind kicking out of the east at around eight miles per hour. Not at all ideal conditions, so I threw everything in the water—topwater, spoons, fresh cut bait, shrimp, Gulp, rattles… All I got for my troubles were Grunts and a huge cat. T-Dog had similar luck.
I read in the DBNJ today that the fish are hanging out at the shore, but that the shore’s too murky to fish. Amen to that.
I tried to redeem the bad bad on Friday with some casting into the surf off of Bicentennial Park in Ormond while hanging out on the beach on Saturday night with friends. All I got for my trouble were a few armloads of sargasso seaweed and a lost rig. Sigh. I was thinking about heading back out today, but the winds still heavy out of the east, so why bother. Instead, I’ll putter around the garden.
