Crabs To Yield Bigness

I'll be on the water by the time you're reading this, but thought I'd share.

Every full moon during the summer, tarpon swim out hundreds of miles offshore to spawn. Right before the full moon, they like to eat a lot for their journey...to fuel up, as it were. This time of year, large numbers of swimming crabs are sucked out of the passes on the outgoing tide. Crabs happen to be one of the tarpons favorite things to chow down on....

I hope these crabs will help me on my quest....

2 inch Gulp Peeler Crab

Location X and Keys Style Flies

Big Eye Hommassasa Deceiver

Stinky Birds And Sheeps...head

The other day, Keith and I hit a nice area near Belleair Causeway that had all of the necessary ingredients conducive to holding fish - an incoming tide, deep water near shallow grass beds, a confluence of currents intersecting at a large oyster bed, residential docks, mangrove spoil islands surrounded by oysters bordering deep water, baitfish, and the always popular bridge pilings....the only thing missing was the fish.

The two state bird sanctuaries on either side of the confluence smell really bad, but you'll have that when there are flocks of pelicans and fleets of diving birds. It's obvious that these birds aren't underfed, that's for sure.

Keith did something that I wouldn't have believed had I not been there - caught a sheepshead around the bridge pilings on a soft plastic jerkbait. The sheepshead were hitting my crab flies as they drifted down the pilings, but I couldn't hook up. All I ended up with were ripped up flies and a better tan.

The only reason I believe we couldn't find fish holding there is water temperature. The temp in the Gulf at the moment is 86 degrees F. I think the best time to fish this time of year would be dawn and dusk. That's why I'm going out tomorrow at ugly early 5:30 AM. Will be checking out a new spot in St Joseph Sound.

This is quite a large area of shallow grass flats with large and deep holes, from 1 foot to 10 feet in depth. I'm thinking that fishing the holes at dawn with an incoming tide just might work.

I need a slump buster....

My Memorial Day - Just Like A Publix Commercial

For this year's Memorial Day celebration, Mom, Brother Steve, Lacy and I went to Philippe Park in Safety Harbor. Mom and Steve did a great job of planning, and making awesome food!

We had sun dried tomato brats, potato salad, roasted corn in the husk, watermelon, and Jim Jones Desert (a concoction invented by mom that's made out of angel food cake, lemon pudding, blueberries,and whipped topping...all mixed together, not made out of Kool-Aid, you sick people)

I launched the kayak during the incoming tide. The mangroves were packed with blennies and finger mullet, and crabs. I was working the mangroves in an area that has a nice drop off from a sand bar just inches from the tree line with lots of prop roots with a dark brown crab fly. My quiet drifting along this tree line spooked a few redfish. I watched one shoot into the mangroves. I cast the crab about a foot away from where it went into the bushes and he came out and hammered it while the fly was falling. Of course he turned right back into the trees and my 25 lb leader quickly broke on the barnacle encrusted prop roots as I tried to horse it out.

Lacy did some things I've never seen her do - like gallop in the water and try to bite the small baitfish that were circling around her legs. It was hilarious! She also dug up a dead horseshoe crab and proceeded to have a not so fresh crab dinner. Needless to say, she was pretty wiped out at the end of the day.

We got packed up in time to beat the impending thunderstorm bearing down on us...

I fell asleep on the couch, feeling super relaxed after a nice day and a nice shower. I'm recovering for tomorrow....Tarpon...