On a recent trip to St. Marks, I arrived early and began tossing topwater lures in hopes of hooking up to some Trout or Reds. I'm not sure what was going on that day, but I couldn't get a strike to save my life. Topwater, subsurface, DOA's. Nothing would work.
So as I paddled around in search of fish, I looked out to notice a massive school of Mullet. The water was practically teeming with them. And since I was practically starving to death while out there in the kayak, I decided I wanted to bring some fish home.
I know I've gone on and on about snatching mullet in previous posts. But it's something I really enjoy. Unless you've ever hooked up with one personally, I can't describe how hard they fight. It really is a good time, and I just love the feel of drag peeling off the reel.
I wound up keeping six total. That was in under 30 minutes. I counted, and had 4 casts within that time period where I didn't hit a fish with the snatch hook. I also hooked and lost about 10, and had 4 others in the kayak that flopped back out into the water. The school never sounded, and just stayed in the same general area the entire time.
I usually don't keep many fish. Part of it is because I like catch and release. The other reason is that I'm just plain lazy and don't want to clean fish. But I was craving a fish fry, and to me, few things beat a bunch of fresh mullet. Since I didn't bring a cooler with me, I kind of laid on the fish the whole paddle back to keep them out of the sun. It seemed to work decently, but I'm pretty sure I smelled like mullet for the next week.
So the next time you're out fishing and the fish just aren't biting, seriously give the snatch hook a try. Any fish on the end of your line beats no fish.
The next few posts will be my most recent trip to Port St. Joe and will be broken up into a few parts.
Woke up at some ungodly hour of the morning last Wednesday and made the 3.5 hour drive down to Port St. Joe with my dad. Despite being zombie-like from the lack of sleep the night before, I was really excited about making this trip. Prior to this, I hadn't been to St. Joe in over six years.
We arrived sometime around 8 am and decided that our first stop would be the St. Joseph's State Park. Even though it had been six years since the last time I had visited, few things had changed throughout the small town. A few new houses, new stores had opened, old stores had closed, and that was about it. The state park was just how I remembered it. We soon launched the kayaks and paddled out over the grass flats and fished the incoming tide.
It was a beautiful morning. The wind was up just a little bit, but it was manageable in the yaks. The best part was that the fish were biting. After just a few casts, I landed a nice fat Speckled Trout on topwater.
I hooked and missed a few more trout after this and then proceeded to catch this little guy.
I never knew they made Bluefish that small. Over the course of the trip, I only landed the one trout and little Bluefish. I missed a good ten strikes and lost a couple of fish that I had hooked. What I'm pretty sure was a Redfish came up and annihilated my topwater lure, but because of their downward facing mouth, he managed to -not- hook himself. Apparently I should have switched to subsurface because my dad landed about six trout and lost a few bluefish on soft plastics.
One thing I love about St. Joe is how much area there is to fish. The grass flats extend for at least a half mile off shore and continue down the seven miles of peninsula.
This is why I was livid slightly perturbed when I saw these people run their boat up in the shallows, chop the grass, make a ton of noise, and chunk and anchor our RIGHT next to me. And no, the picture doesn't quite do their "closeness" justice.
It was at least a small victory to see them get excited and yell "Fish on!!", only to pull back a pinfish with their live bait.
By this point, my dad and I were both really tired from the drive and all the paddling. The wind had come up quite a bit more so we decided to call it quits and head back to the truck. The next morning we decided to launch the kayaks at a cove in the southwest corner of the bay. We got there right at dawn and got to see a beautiful sunrise.
The water was quite a bit more shallow than over at the state park. It took close to 10 minutes of solid paddling before I reached 2 feet of water. To my surprise, nothing was biting. I had taken the fly rod with me so it only made sense that after a few casts, the wind picked up to a near-gale. I did, however, notice that there were mullet -everywhere- and I remembered that I brought one snatch hook with me. I paddled back to the truck, switched my gear up a bit, and paddled back to where I'd seen so many schools. The mullet were VERY thick first thing in the morning, but they had begun to spread out by the time I began snatching. I still, however, managed to land one big fat mullet that I failed to take a picture of. I hit another 15 with the snatch hook and hooked and lost 7 of those. If only mullet would take a lure/fly in saltwater. Believe it or not, they fight very hard. The mullet that I landed took out a bunch of line and even dragged me and my kayak a good 50 yards into the wind.
I gave up after a while since the wind was getting stronger and it was exhausting trying to hook a mullet from the kayak. It's quite a bit harder to hook one from the kayak because one can't get the same leverage as they can while wading.
We didn't really know what to do in the afternoon because of the wind. The Gulf was too rough to launch, and if we launched at the state park, we'd never make it back up the beach to the launch because of the wind. We finally decided to just fish the same area as we did earlier in the morning. It was different this time because the tide had now run out. What was once a long stretch of water 2 feet deep, was now nearly a half mile of six-inch deep grassy water. It took forever to paddle across it thanks to dragging the bottom and fighting the wind. The mullet were still thick, but were now in only a few inches of water and every time I cast the treble hook at them, it just stuck in the grass. I managed to find a hole that was a few feet deep and began casting some soft plastics into it. I caught fish, but unfortunately it was just one croaker after another. But hey, it gave me a chance to use those hook outs that I need to write a review on.
I gave up after a few hours and paddled/push-poled myself back to the launch. Upon arriving, I noticed something I'd nearly forgotten about Port St. Joe. Fiddler crabs!
One can't really be careful when walking around them. Whether you run through the group, or step gingerly near them, you'll still hear an unpleasant crunch as one finds the bottom of your shoe. It's a shame I never make it down to Port St. Joe when the sheepshead are really biting.
Well, I've almost made it. I'm currently halfway through exam week of my toughest college semester yet (and hopefully ever). Two more exams and I'm home free. I'm having a relatively hard time focusing on studying as I can't seem to get my mind off of the upcoming fishing trips.
Summer is, by far, my favorite time of the year. Even though there's almost no hunting to be done, the amount of fun I get out of fishing during summer makes up for it. One of the things I'm -really- looking forward to is getting to go mullet snatching again. Just like it sounds, snatching mullet just consists of throwing a weighted treble hook through a school of mullet and foul hooking one. Obviously, the school needs to be pretty thick and the sharper and narrower the hook, the better. Last summer wasn't great for snatching mullet. I think it had something to do with the hard freeze we had. I heard reports two winters ago that there were frozen mullet washing up on shore. Hopefully this summer they'll have bounced back a bit. Hooking and fighting a mullet might not sound like much fun, but these fish fight surprisingly hard. Enough to rip out some drag actually. And really, a bunch of fried mullet at a fish fry is tough to beat.
I had my best luck snatching mullet the summer before last. My dad and I waited until high tide, and then waded out to an area near Pensacola to try our luck. The mullet were schooled up in the hundreds and we started casting across the schools in hopes of snatching one. If I had landed every one that I hit with the hook, I wouldn't have been able to carry the stringer. After every hit, I'd retrieve my hook to find a clear/silver mullet scale. I kept every scale and counted them at the end of the trip. Over the course of a few hours, I hit 68 mullet by myself and my dad had similar results. Luckily, we did manage to land a few and had a nice fish fry afterwards.
Now I'd just like another repeat of that summer. I (finally) got a call about a possible job near Ft. Walton beach studying beach mice. Due to the logistic nightmare of commuting from Pensacola and only being able to work part time, it's looking like I may be camping on the beach for a few days at a time this summer if I get the job. If I'm lucky, I'll just have to bring a surf rod and see what I can't catch while not working. Once it's set in stone, I'll be good to go.
Kayak fishing tournament is a week and a half away. Still debating about fishing the oil rigs in Alabama for King Mackerel. Depends on the weather, my (hopeful) job, and how daring I'm feeling the night before.
