Venice slobs and meat day 1

[capt hoop]

Did a trip today for RJ hunting and fishing.

Knowing the bite has been off and the winds were not calming down I was not looking forward to getting beat up again. The reason I have not posted much is the weather and river stages have made fishing very tough and I had nothing much to talk about.

Our day started out beautiful.



Our first stop was for bull reds. The bite was slow as we were coming onto a low tide. The second cast has a hookup only to have it throw the hook. It is about 35-40 minutes before the second bite. This one gets wrapped into the power pole and succeeds in also getting away after a very long good fight. That was all it took for this New Jersey boy to admit a redfish fight has a striper beat hands down. The other 2 guys have still not had a sniff. A good hour here watching others around us getting fish and my guy playing hook up and release. Finally Jersey boy hooks up for a third time and lands his first bull red.



Paul is the second one to hook up and it is his first also. Now the tide has turned and the bite is getting a bit better. As we start getting into them Paul nails his second and it is a big fat hog.



This one came in at 42 inches and 23 inch girth. It weighed 30 pounds. We spent most of the morning chasing the big guys. We got a few hard head cats in the mix as well but the majority of our bites were good ones.



The winds were picking up and we took an occasional splash over the stern. We stuck it out because the guys were having a lot of fun catching and releasing some tough fighters.



Once the sea conditions got a bit bouncy I decided to see if we could find some reds for the box. This would give us a chance to get into calmer waters. The way the last 2 weeks have been going I was not expecting much. I went to a nearby place to get out of the wind. I had never fished this area. As I approached it the water cleaned up quite a bit. The tide was running in since 9:00 this morning and would be the rest of the day. Incoming tide is not the best for redfish but you can get them if there is bait around and the water is moving. I got to a place that looked good and put down the power pole. It hit oyster shells at 2 feet. We had to fight the wind on every cast. Our first cast gives us a double and both were just the right size.



We almost had a triple but one got off. We picked away at these fish getting rat reds, slot reds, rat and slot black drum, sheepshead, and even a small flounder.



After we had a dozen slots the bite slowed down. The winds were still blowing and we decided to call it about 2:00. The bite was steady with a lot of shorts in the mix as we invited a chosen few to dinner. We ended up with 12 reds, 4 black drum, and 1 sheepshead in the box.



It was nice getting a good fishing day under my belt again.

Life is Good!
Fishing is not a matter of life or death. It's more important than that.

CAPT HOOP -- OUR FREEDOM

[swamp snorkler]

Nice report Capt