Earlier this week, I talked to Jonah about what this weekend would bring us. We decided to go shrimping up at the haulover canal before its park closes for renovations to the dock and ramp. Why? Who knows? It's fine how it is right now. We got out there late, in true fashion, at 11 pm and got to shrimping. Jonah and his friend Peter were up that way the weekend before and had seen a handful of flounder on the banks toward the end of the night and that prompted Jonah to say, "grab the gigs just in case." We tried out a method Jonah was using the week before, which was basically trolling for shrimp... I know...you say, "trolling? but Nathan you can't troll for shrimp, that's not possible." Isn't it? Well, I’m one of the biggest advocates of trying out theories and this one worked. On a night where we would have gone home empty- handed, or close to it, we ended up with 3 freakin gallons of shrimp, one of our best nights to date. After our arms were exhausted from dipping shrimp after shrimp-- even sometimes six shrimp in one dip-- we decided to try to find those wily flounders. I was getting tired at this point, I think it was around 0400, and I couldn't help but the think to myself how much it was going to suck idling along the shore line and looking for an almost invisible target. Much to my surprise, as we trolled down the bank of haulover canal I spotted what looked like two little eyes looking back at me and wham! Gig to the head!!!!! A few minutes later, wham! Jonah strikes another one! Again and again as we drifted with the contours of the coast we pounded them into the cooler. Success never tasted as good as shrimp stuffed flounder! We ended the night at 0500 with five good size flounder and three gallons of shrimp and headed back to the house. Now, this is when people normally hang up their hats and crawl into a warm bed and sleep till noon the next day then apologize to their loved ones for staying out so late with his/her friends..... but no, not Nathan. In my red bull- induced frenzy, I decide to go home and grab my boat to go pig hunting early a.m. and spec fishing in the later a.m. on the mighty St. Johns. I think my exact works where "Yeah, I think I can make it out there before the sun comes up." Boy was that a bad idea...Once I loaded the boat, grabbed my gear (those of you who know me well know that me getting the boat ready takes forever) and headed to Doc's for some minnows and ice. $16 bucks later (I’m going to review local bait shops one day and Doc's is a work in progress) I get out of there with four dozen minnows, a bag of ice and some red worms. I get to the dock and it takes me about an hour to get the boat started. After exhausting my resources trying to get the stupid thing started, I make a last ditch effort and trim the motor down, thinking "maybe this will work?" vrrroooommmmm! Starts right up! WTF?! So, back to the marathon, I get running across the lake finally at 0830 and get to a spot where I’ve known there to be some pigs. I think you can guess that I didn't see any. I had a nice walk and was able to watch a couple of raccoon babies wrestling but other than that I didn't see or hear anything. So on to spec fishing I go. After I trekked back to the boat, two guys had conveniently positioned themselves a few yards from my empty boat that had all my fishing gear in it. I made sure I spent an extra amount of time unloading my gun right in front of them... I sat and rigged up my fishing rods for a while, in anticipation of a real action- packed late morning. I fished the mouth of Middle River and wasn’t catching anything so I pulled up and moved about a half a mile upstream and started catching some sunfish and small catfish. I ended the day only keeping one big sunfish (because it swallowed the hook). All in all, it was quite the 12 hr stretch and I was beat!
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