Florida Fishing

[huntervasili]

Well I after waiting for a couple months the time rolled around for me to head on down to Florida on Friday evening. Our flight, Scheduled to leave left on time with all our luggage on board but unfortunately we got bumped. Ya gotta love air Canada and their Profit maximizing, satisfaction minimizing ways of overbooking flights. There were 10 of us overbooked and 4 made it on the plane, so our options? fly to Chicago where we may be able to get the Orlando flight or wait in Toronto and possibly get the Orlando Flight. We went to customer service where after about 2 hours of waiting we were finally put onto a flight where we got seat numbers. ohh yea for the flight 5 hours later. We end up arriving at about 1230 instead of the scheduled 730, where we were greeted by our luggage, behind a locked door that is. They only have representatives there from 9am-9pm because we all know how thats the only time when a person needs to get luggage... After about an hour I finally get the Manager on duty to find some keys and we get our gear and head out. First day way basically a write off as the guide was a no show... P/oed at pretty much everything now I knew it could only get better, which fortunately it did. We had a new guide booked for Sunday, we were gonna fish super skinny water for Reds. Really neat I will tell ya. saw hundreds of stingrays and all sorts of birds, and hooked into and landed a bunch of nice reds, on artificials and Cut bait. Also incidentally caught some pufferfish which have a really sharp beak on them and you would often bring in your plastic jerk bait which had clean chunks taken out of it or no tail whatsoever lol . Ok so now to some of the days pics.

 

 

Enjoyed the day on the water Very nice weather all day with the wind picking up a little bit later on in the day.

 

Monday also proved to be an awesome day on the water. Unfortunately I didn't bring the camera so we took the pictures when we got back. This is the days catch which was followed by about 20 oysters mmm:

 

On the left is a bluefish on the right is a pompano

 

 

Left Black Snapper, Right Saltwater Sheepshead

 

Black Drum

 

 

Some bait... he grabbed my bait and there were two of em when I was reeling it in, one fell off though.

 

The last day we did some more surf fishing at a different beach with limited luck. I got a few smaller fish and a bunch of goby like creatures too, all were thrown back that day. Saw some neat stuff there including some sea turtles, a Sub leaving the port, and a pelican that wanted to eat our fish, he inched his way to within four feet of us using his peripheral vision to see what we were doing and to look discrete lol...

 

All in all an enjoyable trip, loved the 25-35*C weather the whole time without a drop of rain. Hope all of you enjoyed reading the report!

 

Bill

[Whopper]

Glad to see ya have a good time Bill

[tbayboy]

Nice stuff Bill. I'm trying to remember the last time I heard of Air Canada not screwing things up, just glad to here you managed to salvage things and have a good time.

[mattyk]

great report, thanks for sharing.

[bassman]

Nice report. I'll be their in August.

 

Cheers!

[fatherof3]

sounds like a good trip,thanks for the report

[Bernie]

Hey Bill, looks like you had a great weekend. Good to see you picked up a few fish too. No idea what they were but I bet they were fun to wind in.

I had to use some peripheral vision myself this past weekend fishing with the guys up here.

[huntervasili]

Peripheral Vision, Duct Tape and thumb tacks 'round your bed Bernie? Yup they sure were fun to catch

[Greencoachdog]

Great report and pics Bill!!!

 

Did you eat any of those fish? They're all good, especially that Pompano!!!

 

That Black Snapper isn't a snapper, it's either a Porgy of a juvenile Black drum... but still a good fish!!!

[huntervasili]

The colours on the "Snapper" faded significantly. Definately not a porgy or a Black drum, I looked up both and its neither... A guy where we were fishing said it was a snapper, but he could'a been wrong. We ate some of the Redfish cooked "on a halfshell" tasted pretty good. Cant wait to be eating the rest. Surf fishing is fun... cant wait to get out and do it again

[oxcowboy]

looks like ya had a great time down there. surf fishing sure is fun, you never know what might be lurking out there, and its a good way to meet alot of new people. great report.

 

jason

[bucktail]

So jealous!!!

[huntervasili]

you shouldn't be bucktail, T-shirts, shorts, Sunglasses tans and farmers tans are all over rated

[scuro]

Thanks for sharing...I enjoyed the report.

[bassmastermike]

Sweet report Bill wish i could have been there thanks for sharing !!!

[ccmtcanada]

Way to go Bill! Even though the trip started out on a sour note, at least you got out there and got into some nice fish! Thanks for the pics...looked like a great time.

[huntervasili]

Thanks guys! ohh but I forgot... I also got a sweet looking (but now fading) watch tan

[Crazyhook]

sweet report man!

[Ramble]

Awesome Report Bill...sorry i didnt comment sooner buti was out ICE FISHING lolol

 

Looks like you had a blast.

 

-R-

[ecxstriper]

Surf fishing is fun... cant wait to get out and do it again

 

YES IT IS.

 THose are some nice Reds you got there. Bill Glad to here the trip worked out for you.

[fishnsled]

Great report Bill!