21 Mar 2008

Dan and his son, Nathaniel, pulled into the parking lot at Gray's B&T at 0700; and pulled back out behind me at 0705, headed for Galvez Landing. The livewell was full of fiddlers and shrimp and we were bound for the Pass. As we approach the North Cut I notice three guys waving at me from the island, appearing in distress. I slid over to them and they asked if I could give them a ride back to Sherman Cove. Well I couldn't just leave them there, they had under estimated last nights cold, having only one sleeping bag between them, and were hungry. When I asked how they had gotten over there in the first place, they tell me they bummed a ride over! ...You did what? OoooK.I dropped them off and got a good laugh as we resumed our original plan.

We round the bend into the pass and are greeted by a constantly increasing East wind. The anchors set and the fishing begins, and empty hooks start coming back. The bites are sporadic and the hooks aren't hooking. So I pulled the anchor and repositioned, and did it again 15 min. later, and finally I get it right.

Nathaniel Puts a nice fish in the boat almost instantly. Then the bait losing started again. The bite continued to be constant but slow and extremely light. Over the course of a couple hours we managed to pour through 7-9 dozen assorted baits. We were repaid for our offerings with 5 more Sheepsheads, and this nice 7lb Black Drum, Dans best fish of the day. His other catches included a Porcupine Pufferfish.

Nathaniel was the show-off today, putting most of the fish in the well. I succeeded in getting rocked about 100,000 times and losing my only fish on the way up! After we had gone through all of our live baits and most of the dead stuff, we packed it in and made the run back to Galvez. We got the boat back on the trailer and pulled the fish out of the livewell. The guys admired their catch then Dan told me they only needed 2 Sheepies and the Drum for dinner and offered me the rest of the fish. I really appreciated him letting me have the other four to do with as I pleased, so I turned, to the surprise of on-lookers, and threw them back! Thanks Dan for showing sportsmanship and conservation!