Last week I did the beach trip with the inlaws at the beach in Destin. I brought the kayak to wet a line off the beach.
Between me and my brother in laws who i lent my yaks to a few times, lots of kingfish and spanish were caught every evening or morning. Didn’t seem to matter which. Lots of bait balls between 20' and 50'. One evening I was out fishing catching spanish and it had slowed down a little out at the 40' mark so I figured I would go 10' shallower to see if the fish were moving in closer as the sun was getting lower in the sky. After about 10 minutes of nothing I saw a ball of bait from about a hundred yrds off and went in closer to troll through it. As I got closer the bait started greyhounding out of the water in all directions as if something was after it. (It wasn’t just flipping on the surface like most schools do) This particular ball of bait was ballyhoo; a killer baitfish to troll with. As they were jumping out of the water everywhere I tried to position myself sideways as to maybe catch one or two stupid ones jumping in my kayak. Thats when I saw it...
A stick pointing out of the water slashing flailing ballyhoo all over the top of the water.... Where is a topwater bait when you need it!
HOLY CRAP I thought! heart racing I reeled in my stinger rig and made an attempt to cast towards the feeding/billing. Not even close! my line was so twisted from my crappy swivel; it hardly made it out 40ft! I starting getting antsy and begin trolling all around where the action was. After about 20 minutes I’m thinking well at least I saw that up close and personal! That was quite a sight. So I reel in to check my bait and see its still intact and cast back out to start a troll again.
As soon as the stinger rigged cigar minnow hits the water the line starts screaming! sweet fish on! Its smoking so it might be a nice king! No sooner than it started screaming this thing rockets out of the water shaking violently! HOLY CRAP, HOLY CRAP, HOLY CRAP! Am I seeing what I’m seeing!!! A freaking billfish. After 5 amazingly awesome jumps he comes up next to the boat and I get to see him! The wire leader is all over his bill like a bola with hooks! He aint coming off so I make the short peddle into the beach where all the beach beer crew brother-in-laws were.
I jump out of the boat at the first sand bar wrap the bill up with my LSU hand towel and unhook my new buddy. All while yelling like an @$$#0&% Get my boat! Get out my camera in the back! Hurry!!! I run up the bank and snap a pic and bring him back to out past the second bar where I collapse in disbelief!
I know he’s not a trophy so you can spare me your comments!
But he didn’t cost me one drop of gas to get!
Here he is in transit back to his big photo op!
(I know no one would believe me if I didn’t!)
Here is a pic of little ole “slim-shady”...
:buttrock::buttrock::buttrock:
