We had our 5th annual Family Thanksgiving at IOP…Rented a house with a dock, ate, drank, fished and drank, fished, ate.
The first year we did this (5 years ago) we caught approximately 125 reds and 75 trout…Last year was the worst, but mainly due to weather, fog to be exact.
This year was pretty good, especially with the big tides. Did not catch big numbers of reds, but most of what we caught were big fish. If you toss out a few ratz, the rest averaged 7 or 8 pounds, with several 12 pounders landed.
Falling tides were ok around docks with cut mullet and mm. As the tide got lower the flats were covered with good sized schools, but for the most part not real aggressive feeders. Picked at them with Gulp Jerk Shad and Captain Mike Able got a nice one OTF Tuesday morning.
Did one charter on Friday morning while the family was shopping, etc. Had a great crew from Summerville…8 year old Tyler was the star landing a rat and then a pair of 10ish pounders, the second one all by himself. Pop and Grandpop did pretty good also. We loss several nice fish to pilings, oysters and grass…but it was a good trip considering the tide and the breakoffs.
The big bite for me this past week was just as the tide rose to and into the grass…half a blue crab brought aggressive bites and big fish. This was the nice part about having a dock, we could fish that 1 to 2 hour window by just jumping on the boat and jumping off an hour or so later…Plus we got all of our crabs free every morning from the traps set off the dock.
We reelly enjoy these trips…my adult children can still work if they want/need to but be there in the evenings…no airports or long drives. If we had done this in the keys it would have costs triple or more versus what it cost local…plus someone most likely would not have been able to come due to work/school. The 6 mile drive home was tiring, but I took a nap when I got here.
reelly…
