Captains day out - Wednesday Sept. 17

After Ivan stirred up the Gulf, Bay, and Flats we finally got some decent weather and headed out to hunt some fish on Wednesday. It was a beautiful morning and we were fortunate to have our friend Captain Doug Hatten on board for a Captains day out.

We left the dock and passed under Johns Pass bridge at first light and the first thing we saw were several Tarpon showing themselves. Naturally we were set up for Snook , etc., but threw together a rig and drifted through the pass. A couple of Poons circled the helpless bait under our cork but refused to eat. After a couple of passes we headed on to our intended target area further south.

Bait around some of our markers yielded some white bait, pins, and, unfortunately too many "pumpkin seeds". Nothing like a 12 foot net laced with hundreds of pumpkin seeds which leads to "putting and pickin", ‘til we reached a more productive bait area.

We saw Tarpon in several areas which was encouraging, and plenty of snook still on the beaches, but all early seemed to have lockjaw. As the flood came in we hit another of our favorite haunts and on the last third of the tide the "bite was on". We limited out on mangrove snapper with redfish, snook, grouper mixed in the bag.

There were large schools of jacks cruising by and when wanted a good hard, fast fight, we through at a couple of pods with the expected results.

All in all it was a beautiful day, good company, and plenty of fish , most of whom became dinner Thursday evening at our beach cottage where we threw them on the charcoal grill and feasted with several friends.

A special thanks to Captain Doug Hatten, who has fished these waters for the last 25+ years and has won many tournaments for sharing his time, knowledge, and sense of humor with us.

Let's go fishin'!

Captains B. K. Ankrum & Kellen Ankrum