Proto #2-3

Since I’m kind of in a limbo between seasons and runs, I’ve revisited the “Super Gig” idea and made two more prototypes, moving my center of operations (I will call it ALPHA CENTRAL) to the living room so I can multi-task (i.e., watch baseball) while I tinker.  I’ve created two more devices that might aid in filling the bucket/boat quicker.  I’ve been reading reports of the crabs starting to float in the Haulover Canal more often and that gets me interested in going up there for a night of nonstop action.  That action- packed evening will ultimately entail gigging flounder, which brings me to this post about prototype #2 and #3.  I’ll start off with proto #2 because #3 isn’t at all exciting and is moreso intended to show off its masterful design for gator hunting this fall.  For Proto #2, I stuck a 50 watt halogen light in a 1 ½ PVC Y with the light in the part of the Y that aims at a 45 degree angle. Then I put a coupler to accept a threaded plug in the portion of the Y that is straight inline with the pole.  (The pole being a 7 foot  ¾ schedule 40 aluminum pipe with the power cord coming through it.) See Pictures!  I’m not tooting my own horn or anything but this one’s a great design.  The way this is set up, I can attach any type of device on the tip that I want.  The two that I have set up now are a flounder gig tip and a gator dart deployment tip.  Other devices to come later this year will be the frog gig, the bang stick attachment and a gaff hook deploying mechanism.  Proto #3 is pretty lame; it’s just an underwater light essentially. It’s a red 20 watt halogen light bulb in a straight 10 foot PVC pole.  The intended use of this will be used to stick into the holes gators dig in the banks of the river and check to see it they’re home or not.  That’s it for that one.

Easter Report

All I have to report this week is that the shrimp are slowing which means I might get a little more sleep.  I went out with brother-in-law Ross to Oak Hill on Friday night and it just ended up being a tough night; there were some equipment hiccups and the shrimp never really ran like I thought they would.  One thing I did notice about the shrimp not running was that the moon was never up-- something to keep in mind for next time, maybe?  Ended up with about a half a gallon and that’s it.

The stronger the current the better.

I tried my hand at shrimping YET again last Friday night.  Headed out a little earlier then normal, pretty much right after I got home from work and loaded the boat.  I really had no expectation for this trip; after getting my ass kicked on Tuesday, I was back to square one.  I got on the water around 10 pm because the low tide was expected to hit around 1230 am. I had a little time to kill so I messed around with different light setups to see if it would give me a different glow putting them one way or another. It didn’t really, so I basically just dropped them right over the side of the boat and let them sink about 2 feet.  I halfway planned on trying to get some clams while I was up there but it didn’t work out. I ended up not ever trying. The night got off to a slow start: about an hour or two into the low tide I only had about a gallon of small bugs. I had told Blythe that I was going to stay out till I got my limit whether it took all night or not.  So the hours passed and the shrimp trickled in little by little.  At about 4:45 am, I noticed the current really picked up and it brought a few more shrimp across the lights but they still weren’t “running.”  At about 3:00 am, I looked over at a pontoon boat about 20 yards to the east of me and I noticed they were dipping pretty regularly.  What the heck?  I watched the regular dipping turn into a frenzied dip and I again thought, what the heck?  I wasn’t seeing anything.  So I did what I would normally never do: I pulled anchor and moved 10 feet east almost behind them but about 50 yards back.  I don't think people mind if you get close to them up in Oak Hill, everyone's pretty cool about the lack of space up there. When I tuned my lights back on and looked down into the water, I couldn’t believe it. I think I said something like “HOLY SH!T” and “WHAT THE F!!!” Shrimp EVERYWHERE!!!!! Then the frenzy began. I was dipping only from one side of the boat and I gained 3 gallons in and hour and a half. WOW. One thing to note is that there was a much stronger current at the second spot.  I ended a tough night of waiting out a rainstorm, abandoning a clamming expedition and ultimately no sleep with about 4 gallons of sweet morsels from the Mosquito Lagoon.  I would have gotten that five gallon limit but my net released TWICE!  Thus losing about a half gallon each time. Dumping an entire nets haul back into the water where they go on to live another night.
This week, 1st Mate Ross is back in town for Easter and we will be going north once again to try to get that elusive 5 gallon limit.  Jonah is planning on coming too so we might try to buddy boat and combine our lights close to each other to try that method out but we’ll see.

SPRING TIME UPDATE

Let's see, where do I start?

I’ll start with the winding down of shrimping… it looks like the shrimping adventures will dwindle from now 'til fall. Good thing because the last time I went out the mosquitoes almost carried me away.

However, with the winding down of shrimping comes the blue crab “run.” This is when we set up just like shrimping and get coolers FULL of tasty meat in a shell.

I was without a boat for two weeks there due to a fuel tank vent hose malfunction. I got off easy with only having to cut out about 4 inches of my floor to get it fixed. Phew! Dodged a major bullet there. Finally got that fixed and I’m back in my boat and back on the water. If you didn’t notice, my posts were all about trips on other people's boats.

The cobia are still around, they're straight off the port and in and around the larger bait pods. This has been an unbelievable year for cobia fishing and I’m glad I was able to share my encounters with everyone.

King fish are super thick on Lead Wreck. It’s a quick trip straight out of the port. To get there, just go straight east 'til you hit 70 feet of water and you won’t have to fish long to get your limit of “old smilies.”

The marine flea market was a great success for me; I was able to pick up a new pushpole for the flats boat (something I’ve wanted for 7 years now), a few new shrimping lights and, almost more importantly, I sold some unused fishing gear to one of the vendors, allowing me to almost break even.

Tripletail “should” be sticking around for the rest of the summer, although I know now that I've said it it they're going to disappear, just watch.

I’m going to be fishing the flats more this summer with an occasional ocean trip for kings. I’m looking forward to getting on the flats again. That will allow me to get in more time with the fam.


WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING THIS WEEKEND!!!

I see the roseate spoonbills are back in the local lagoons and rookeries; they are a must see.

Anywhere you go right now-- ocean, river, lake-- it won’t take long to find fish.

The pan fish are spawning in the St. Johns River, so that's a good bet.

Fishing early morning for MONSTER gator trout with a top water plug is really fun this time of year.

Get the smoker out and cook some BBQ!!!

There are no current hunting seasons.


If anyone ever needs to use the kayaks or canoe to experience Florida at its finest, just give me a call and they're yours for the weekend. Or, if you ever want to join me and risk the possibility of becoming a casuality of the blog, I’m more than happy to share my experience with other people on the boat. 

Theory tested...

Well, I don’t like egg on my face any more than the next guy but I sure got a face full Tuesday night!!! I’ve been eager to try out my shrimping theory and Tuesday the stars were aligning for it to be a good haul. According to my theory, of course. I could tell I wasn’t going to be able to sleep well and there was no baseball to aid in that attempt, so I loaded up the skiff and hit the road. There was a large thunderstorm up in Oak Hill when I left my house but it was rapidly exiting the coast and it would be gone by the time I made the 45 mile trip up there. That might have played a big factor in my “eggface.” I got to River Breeze boat ramp right at low tide which was scheduled to hit at 10:15 p.m., got set up and saw a good number of shrimp right off the bat but it slowed quickly. Slowed to a trickle almost instantly. I’m not really sure why they didn’t run-- might have been the rain, might have been the murky water, might have been the moon (which was 2/3 full)-- but, as always, it was educational. I ended up shrimping for 4 hours and got less than a gallon... ouch. Oh well; Blythe was planning on making some shrimp salad this week so I’m glad I could help.

Democracy!

FWC considers extending alligator hunting hours News Release Thursday, February 24, 2011 Media contact: Tony Young, 850-488-7867 The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) directed staff to advertise a rule amendment to extend alligator hunting hours. Commissioners will vote on it at their June meeting. The FWC gave preliminary approval for an additional four hours of daylight-hunting to the state's recreational alligator hunting season, which runs Aug. 15 - Nov. 1 each year.

Currently, the rule primarily allows for only nighttime-hunting of alligators, between one hour before sunset and one hour after sunrise. The change would extend alligator hunting hours, establishing the legal hours from 5 p.m. until 10 a.m. during the annual 11-week season.

In developing the recommendation, FWC staff weighed biological considerations, people's desire for additional daylight opportunities to hunt alligators, the concerns expressed about potential conflicts between alligator hunters and other users of lakes and rivers, and the unique and diverse views citizens have about alligators and their management in Florida. -->

Dear Alligator Management Stakeholder:

We recently sought your input regarding additional daylight alligator hunting hours under our Statewide Alligator Harvest Program. After carefully considering all of the input and assessing the pro’s and con’s of making any changes, the Commission was presented with a draft rule change that would provide four additional hours of daylight alligator hunting and set the legal hours from 5pm until 10am each day during the established harvest season. The Commission conceptually approved this draft rule at their February 2011 meeting, and they will be considering it for final adoption at their June 8-9 meeting in St. Augustine. Please do not hesitate contacting me (harry.dutton@myfwc.com or 850.410.0656 x 17279) if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback about this draft rule change. Additional details of this endeavor, including summaries of the input received, can be found on the Alligator Management Program’s website. Best Regards, Harry J. Dutton, Coordinator

I got this (above) email asking for input in this matter so I wrote a few things down and I thought I'd share-

Sorry, this info is most likely too little too late. I must have missed that email sent the first time regarding the rule change input. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. With the increased daylight hours, there will definitely be more large gators killed. Is this the intent of the commission?

2. With the increased daylight hours, are the hunters going to get “checked” more by the field officers during the daylight times? I was “checked” a few times last year, in the daylight during my hunts, and the officers were not considerate of the fact that we had less than an hour to hunt in the daylight. It was extremely frustrating to take time off work to be able to get on the water in an effort to have time to hunt the evening hour of sunlight, only to get checked by the same officer in the same spot, and to watch the sun set behind me both times.

3. Most of the gator processing shops I talked to would only open on the weekends from 0700 to 0800 or so. Were they consulted in this change? They will be required to have longer hours, what is their reaction in this matter?

4. This may make it difficult for your field officers to determine if the gator is killed by a bangstick or a gun. If my memory serves, there was a time that gator season overlapped with a gun season: how will they police the likelihood of people using rifles and scopes in the extended daylight hours?

5. Lastly, (Please recognize I do not know the dates of this year’s coming hunting seasons) making the hunting time 5 pm to 10 am is actually hurting the hunter. The sunrise/ sunset times continually change. Have you considered that the daylight savings is November 6th this year, which means there won’t actually be 4 hrs of daylight once this time change happens? For example: take the difference between August 15 and November 15th 2011, the sun will set at 8:03 p.m. on August 15th, during the same season the sun will set at 5:20 p.m. on November 15th. That only leaves 20 minutes to utilize the sunlight to hunt later in the season.

Thanks again for offering a chance to have an open line of communications with the hunters. Keep your fingers crossed that I get my tags this year, and I look forward to seeing you out there.

Capt. Nate

"WHAT THE???"

This weekend looked good weather- wise but I hadn’t made any plans to go out. I was just planning on sticking around the house and doing some much needed yard work. Thank goodness, John M called and saved me from my wily wasteland of a yard. At least, on Saturday. John called late in the evening Friday night with an open seat on the “It’s Noon Somewhere” and, as always, I jumped at the chance to get out on the open ocean. I hadn’t really taken a good look at the conditions or the reports people gave lying about where the fish had been the week prior, but John mentioned heading out about 6-7 miles to once again sight- fish for cobia… you had me at “DO YOU…?” So, off we went to the R2 buoy and turned north from there. After messing around with a few scattered tripletail and not getting anything in the cooler, I did however get the “no fish funk” off the boat by dip netting a small tripletail that was hanging around an adrift buoy. We eventually found ourselves up north on Hetzle Shoal but the water was too cloudy to sight-fish around that area. So we made the snap decision to go even further north to the Chris Benson reef. Now some 28 miles north from the port and 10-15 miles out, we rerigged a few rods for trolling cigar minnows behind the boat for a chance at a passing- by king fish. About two minutes after we dropped the lines out, we had a nice sized king fish hit the bait and come halfway out of the water doing so, but it never got the hook. After a little idling around, CJ pointed out a sea turtle and lo and behold, there was a 20 lb Cobia with it. So let the scramble began! Since we had the line out the back and most of the other rods stowed we were probably entertaining to watch as we tried to get a bait in front of its nose. Luckily, once the turtle went back down the cobia and a few remora stayed with us. Luckily for them, that is, because we tried for a solid 30 minutes to get this one cobia to bite anything. We tried literally almost every lure and bait in the boat: jigs, hard lures, live shrimp, dead shrimp, cut bait…uncut bait. Until John said something to the effect of, “Looks like the cobia wants to eat the remora.” DING! Light bulb! I had bought some 2 ft plastic eels last year and I had them in my tackle box. “That’ll work,” I thought. So I tied it on and the cobia would follow it to the boat but turn away when it saw the boat….HHHAAAAA, SO FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!!!!! Ding! Another light! “We can try to gaff it when it gets close to the boat again, John.” Now, at this point, it was worth a shot. So here we go: John gets the gaff ready and I lure our dinner close to the boat and, WHIFF! John misses with the gaff only to have the cobia freak out and SLAM the eel. “????????????????????? What the?!” I thought as my line was screaming off the reel and POP! It came off. F Me. Oh well. It was great having the chance to get a true A$$ kicking. Now, after it popped off, I took a last ditch effort cast back toward where he had swam away and as we were just standing around, licking our wounds, WHAM! a king fish grabs the eel and starts smoking me AGAIN!!! And you guessed it: POP. It swims away with half my $9 eel…F Me again! That was it. We were out of time and had to head back to dry land and live as land lovers for the next week, defeated and dejected. Or so I thought… Once everything was cleaned up from the cobia frenzy and again stowed, we headed back south toward the mouth of the port. I returned to the swivel chair next to Capt. John, popped my earphones in, turned the i-pod back to shuffle (this is my usual activity when running with John) and kept a keen eye out for any dark shadowy travelers that might be a holding a redemption fish for us. About 10 minutes into the run back, I was head-banging to some old school Metallica when John threw the boat into neutral and started yelling, “Big cobia, big cobia on the surface!” In one sweeping instinctive motion, I leapt to my feet (but first put down my beer) and headed to the front of the boat, grabbing my rod on the way. Sure enough, there was a ray covered in BIG cobia. First cast I pulled two 50+ pounders off the ray and the same stinking thing that has happened now 4 times this year happened yet again. They followed my jig (pink, of course; this time with the second half of that giant eel as the trailer) to the boat and I opened my bail to drop the jig. When one of them hit, it then swam back to the surface straight up at me and that just built up more and more slack in the line ‘til it just spit it out. Now I can see all this as it’s happening every time and I can’t even describe what kind of emotions go through you when you think you have an epic fish on the line only to watch it look up at you and BLEAH just spit it out. No biggie, though: the ray was still within casting range-- not quite visible at this point because it had gone toward the east into the glare of the sun-- but I knew roughly where it was so I gave it another heave and reeled in a few times and WHAM!!! FISH ON!!!!! Here’s the weird part I wanted to write about today… I still had the earphones in from the run back and throughout the first cast and into the bite after the second cast I was listening to my favorite music, a little Metallica. But when I first settled into what was about a 20 minute fight, the music changed to some classical crap like Beethoven or something (I just went and checked back on the i-pod and it was Mozart’s –andante divertimento K-136 whatever that is). Nothing wrong with Beethoven or Mozart, but when you’re in the heat of the moment and stressed about losing yet another fish and having to walk the plank if this one gets off, you don’t want elevator music playing in your head. It was so strange to have it going in that moment, though. No sooner did the classical music stop then a Brittney Spears song started playing or something like it. I remember asking if John and CJ could hear it, risking the embarrassment of them thinking I had gone softy or something. Anyways, back to the fish now on the line and the stress I was under to get him in. After a few deep runs and a formidable fight (inevitably falling to my beautiful handcrafted Crowder rod and a nice shiny Penn spinner commanding control of the situation at hand), John used his gaffing expertise and put an end to our long drawn-out day of getting a butt-kicking handed over by some wily pelagics. Phew! Got one in the cooler! Didn’t have any more time to get after that ray again; I had to be back to port to make Blythe, Critter and my dinner engagement. Ultimately, it was an awesome day on the water and I had a fantastic time with some good friends. Sunday, John stoked up the smoker and put on some cobia ribs, I brought over some shrimp and wild pig to throw on and we all ate like kings.

From the Bucket to my Belly...

Once again Jonah and I decided to head out late Friday night to go shrimping in Oak Hill. I had spent some time last week researching the tides and relating them to the recent trips we had been on to try to establish a trend. I think we figured out some things this weekend. The forums are full of advice, of course, but deciding which of the advice to take and place in the old memory bank is the tough part. We decided to go, regardless of the tides, on more or less a fact-finding mission…yeah, that’s what we’ll call it. We showed up at the tail end of a lower than average high tide. It should have been a major indicator that it was going to be a long night when we noticed an empty parking lot. HHMMM? As we were staging the jon boat what few boats that happened to be out were all coming in for the night. Remember, self, we’re on a fact finding mission… self.

So off we went into the darkness, no boats to avoid this Friday night; the channel was empty and we had our pick of wherever we wanted to set up. We headed south to the second green flashing channel marker, set up, and didn’t see a thing. Decided to move around for a while and get the lay of the land, so we idled south a half a mile or so, zig-zagging across the channel along the way, looking at docks and checking out the different contours of the mangrove-covered shorelines. At one point we slipped into a small lagoon where the water was completely covered in finger mullet; I took a video to try to show everyone, hopefully you can see some. I think you'll be able to at least hear them-- it was almost deafening listening to them jumping around. After we came around the backside of an island (after about an hour of looking around), we were close to the spot we were at a few weeks earlier and we decided to anchor up and wait till the low tide that was scheduled to change around 0230. One of the things I noticed right away is that at about 0200 the commercial guys started popping up all around us. Hmmmm, good indicator. Sure enough, 0230 was the ticket, the shrimp started to run and they ran thick. We ended up with a solid three gallons and much more valuable experience on how to time these things. In conclusion, when the New Smyrna Inlet/ Halifax River are at low tide on the tide chart, the shrimp will run at River Breeze/ Oak Hill. You may come away asking, "So why should I care, Nate?" Well, think of it this way: If you're interested in shrimping, then I’ve done all your work for you. I’ve gone out and gotten skunked, stayed up all night and boiled it down so I can show you how to optimize your time on the water and increase your trip to shrimp ratio. All you have to do now is look at the tide chart and see when the low tide is at a manageable time so you’re not waiting out there for hours and just starting to see the little crusties at 0200 in the morning. For example: we’ll take a Friday night in April, let's say 4.08.11. The low tides are at 0549 and 1805. Neither of those times are worth losing sleep over. However!!! Next Friday, April 15th, is going to be a full moon as well as the low tide hitting at a convenient time of 0105, first thing on Saturday morning, which are much better currents and times for salvaging the weekend's "pre-planned activities." This way you will get home around 0300 and get more shuteye (instead of getting in at 0630 and having to shower and go right to work like I did this weekend). Anyway, that’s my take on this whole shrimping thing, hopefully this helps.

Happy Opening Day

As I sit in my mold infested building (sneezing) and stare at my gray cloth cubicle partitions, I can’t help but to think about all the Americans filtering into stadiums across the country to watch what will be 3 hours of, most likely, boring, slow, uneventful baseball and yet, they will love every moment of it. And you know, I couldn’t be more jealous of them. All I can do to show my FANHOOD is actually take a lunch break today (as opposed to working through it as usual), go to a hotdog stand and try to tell the guy how to make me a Dam# Chicago Dog! Now, does anyone know how to say that in Spanish?...Yo necissito uno Chicago Pero…pronto!? This is all I can think to do to try to shake the “Curse of the Goat.” Maybe this is our year, maybe I should go get curried goat for lunch instead, maybe not. Stupid goat… stupid curse… Happy opening day, everyone! Here’s to a year of enviable heart break… May your nights be filled with slow- speaking, softspoken commentators and falling asleep on the couch only to wake up for the post game show to find out your team lost…again. I know that’s what’s in store for me. Only 167 or so games to go…