 |
Report for Destin, Florida - Nearshore
Capt. Larry Pentel
June 11, 2001
Destin - Saltwater Fishing Report
It's hurricane season! The wind isn't really blowin' but it has actually rained every day for the past week and the surf has been up just enough to keep me from beach launching. The remanants of tropical storm Allison have been camped out in the North central Gulf and from the radar picture this AM she appears to be going go right through downtown Mobile with a BUNCH of rain for our area. The weather service keeps saying it's "not tropical" but the radar picture paints a perfect picture of a tropical storm with rotation around a large eye.
I only got to run one Gulf trip this past week and as good as the fishing was I'm about going through withdrawls. I picked my anglers up with a little bit of a sea running so we eased offshore at a slower speed than I usual run, took us half an hour to get where I wanted to fish. The snappers started biting immediately and my crew wasn't quite ready for 'em. I quickly got everybody trained up and we started putting red ones over the rail that averaged 'bout 4-5#. With my clients doing good I quit playing helper for a minute and put out the flat line. It wasn't 5 minutes before a 8# snapper devoured a live bait right on top! We got him in and back to fishin' when the fly pole went over again. This time a nice mahi (dolphin) was jumping behind the boat. We fished the rock for 2 hours trying to get snappers in between a constant bite of pelagics. We had a dozen good snappers in the boat, 5 kings to 25#, the mahi (10#), an axe handle spanish about 5# and had a shark eat a good grouper right under the boat. That probably had everybody more exited than the fish in the box! My crew decided they wanted to try for triggers so I moved to a different rock and we started 2 hook fishin'. I'm afraid I wore 'em out too quick on the first stop 'cause they just couldn't react fast enough to hook the trigs. We put 5 in the box along with some vermillion and pink snappers and it was time to go. When I went to clean fish they went to get more coolers, they had figured one was enough for a 4 hour trip. Sometimes it feels real good to be wrong!
Just because I haven't been in the Gulf doesn't mean I'm not fishin'. Some of my parties have been willing to go bay fishing and have been very pleased with the decision. The speckled trout have been biting REAL good this past week. The overcast sky, the low pressure close by or the influx of fresh water in the bay I don't know, they're just on. I went yesterday evening for three hours with one angler. He caught about 2 dozen fish with 4 over the 20" slot limit. No secret baits, had fish eat topwaters ( my favorite), jigs and DOA's. One trip had a couple of repeats and one gentlemens 7 year old. They had done real well in the gulf in the past but he had promised to take his son fishin' so quickly decided to bay fish when the surf was up. We went live bait fishing to give the young angler a better shot and got a memory of a life time. After catching a few small trout the youngsters cork took off and he obliged when I yelled "set the hook". Obviously a big fish with the rod loaded and the drag goin' out. "I got em', I got em'- I don't got em". Dad his buddy and I watched in amazement as our junior angler got pie eyed when the rod was snatched from his grip, bounced down the rail of my boat and went skipping across the water towed by a rather large redfish. He didn't do anything wrong, just got outmatched! We went on to catch a few more fish till our younger angler tired and I got to take corks off and the adults top water fishin' for an hour. One of my anglers quickly figured it out and landed 5 large trout out of 8 that blew up on his lure. You'ld of thought he just had a bowl of ice cream for the first time!~ He was so exited he decided this was the most fun fishin' he had ever done. Now this fellow has caught groupers, amberjacks, snappers etc. on my boat in the past but watching a 3# tout crash a floating plug in gin clear 3' water just lit him up. Dad got one nice one in the boat but just couldn't keep from snatching the lure away every time he saw a fish make a pass at it. After a brief discasion in the bow on the way home they approached me about fishin' 2 days next trip down. One for reef fish, a big pull and the freezer and one for topwaters and adrenaline.
Go fishin'-- don't let the weather stop you. Any thing short of a hurricane you can always find some fish willing to cooperate. It may not be the planned species but you just might discover something new and exiting. It hardly ever rains all day-fish when mother nature makes it comfortable.
Capt. Larry Pentel
More Fishing Reports:
|
|
|
|
