Fishing Oak Hill, August 19, 2008
T-dogg and I got a late start after discovering that the trailer taillights had burned out. (Walmart’s pretty empty at 6:45am!) The dogg was in a foul mood after losing at poker the night before, and coaxing out corroded bolts before dawn didn’t help. But we sill managed to get the boat into the water off the public dock at Canaveral a little after 8am. We fished the area behind JBs for a while, but gave up when we saw the fifth or sixth pod of dolphins having a merry time. I’ve never seen so many dolphins—they were everywhere, in the shallow water and in the channels. Pelicans and the gulls loudly expressed their enthusiasm for the dolphins’ sport.
So we gave up on that area and headed down the west channel past Oak Hill and Boston Whaler and finally out to the more or less open water and shoals near Bird Island. Tony caught a small flattie around 10 and then, a bit before 11, we found a hot spot about a fifty yards off shore, in the usual mix of sand holes and long grass. In the space of less than an hour, we caught a dozen redfish between fifteen and seventeen inches. I caught four on gold spoons and New-Penny Gulp shrimp; T-dogg got eight on plastic shads and grey Gulp shrimp. As usual on the flats, the dogg out-fished me—this time, I can blame major reel problems. My lightweight Yozuri hybrid line kept getting weird kinky knots near the hook. I must have re-tied a dozen double-unis. I either wound the damn thing on backwards (though the whole POINT of the hybird is that it doesn’t have a memory), or it was careless user-error. The dogg traded reels and he, of course, didn’t have any trouble, so it was likely my being a fucktard.
At one point, the dogg threw three times and got three reds while I was trying to untangle my line from the steering column… yes, it was that bad.
A bit later in the day the dogg caught this trout as we tooled up the east channel towards Apollo Beach. I’m surprised we didn’t catch more—the weather and winds were perfect for them, and I threw spoons for a couple of hours through weeds, which usually does the trick.
When we pulled into the dock around five, there was totally tricked-out skiff which had to have run thirty k’s. I asked the two guys on board if they’d had any luck—all day, and two undersized trout.
Just goes to show that money can’t buy you love or fish.
