Ditch Crabs

During our inlet encounter, Jonah had mentioned how well the blue crabs were running at Haulover

Canal on one of his late night adventures with the mighty Poncho, and that really got my mouth watering for some crabby patties. FishBob was in town from San Diego and I thought it would be fun to show him how we get those “ditch crabs” and hopefully some shrimp too. So, Saturday night after a little nap, FishBob, Jonah and I headed up to the wildlife refuge to try to get a bucket full of goodies.  Ultimately it turned into a really, really, really long night with very little to show for it; I think we ended up with a dozen crabs and, like, 9 shrimp. Whatever. We tried.

So, with about 3 hours of sleep under our belts, FishBob and I woke up early and tried to get some flats fishing in before it got too hot. It didn’t take long to get hot… but the only thing we caught was a buzz-fish at brunch after we got off the water. We tried top water, soft plastics, doing the lucky fish dance, and everything in between with zero success. I think the full moon got us on that trip: the fish were out there but we could only hook a few and didn’t get anything to the boat. Yes, that’s right; I just told you I got skunked!!! For the first time in I don’t know how long, I got smoked. Oh well, it was fun being on the water and I still had plenty of fight left in me…