Three Times A Charm? (2/23)

[Latimeria]

"Birthday Weekend"

This past weekend, I went on a lobster trip where we caught 74 bugs and not a single one was legal.  It poured on my birthday, so I didn't even bother taking the boat out.  Instead I opted for Sunday and to keep it in the bay just in case the shop didn't fix the problem.  I know they are trying, but it's getting pretty damn expensive getting these ghosts out of my boat.

I met up with Steve at Pepper Park to launch the boat and waited a half hour with the gates still being locked.  I called the number on the sign to have a salty b!tch... probably not the best term, but she must have had a rough night or was just angry with the world.  Basically said we're SOL until they can get there.

We made the Jump to J-Street and launched.  The boat fired up but stalled right away.  This wasn't a good sign...

We finally started making it out and was about a quarter mile away when I just wanted to give it a little gas to breathe... 5 buzzers going off, the pisser shooting steam and then the egine stalls....  Not a good start to the morning at all.  I dropped the trolling motor and we fished where we were knowing at least the wind would blow us pretty close.  The wind was howling since first light and made things tough with the amount of eel grass floating in the water.

Steve then yells WOW! Turtle!  I turned to just see it going down and making a big wake.  That was a huge sea turtle!

I pulled out the counter and started clicking on every bass we caught.  We had a 70 fish day ranging from 4-P to PP to real bass.



Most were on the smaller side, but we rallied with some nicer models which was a pleasant surprise.



Some were fat...



You could tell it's close to spring since the big smelt were out in force and the stingrays were cruising the surface.  In any case, We did get a surprise or two, but I thought I had a nice corvina until I saw what it was.  This is only my third bonefish on a swimbait.  I'm sure we would have knocked the snot out of them if we had live ghost shrinp!



Well, that was it.  I limped back to the dock to get it back on the trailer and it stalled again and blew steam after 100 yards of it running this time.  Ugh, this is so frustrating.

Thanks for reading...

[BenCantrell]

Nice job Tom! Those bass look particularly handsome, must have been good lighting for photos. And nice job on the lure-caught bonefish.

[vdisney]

I'm speechless Tom, don't know what to say other than I'm bummed for you. 

[sasquatch]

Super disappointing when the engine went straight to its old ways.

We did make the best of it and caught a bunch of bass.

Got my fingers crossed they can get it squared away.