Shrimpin.com

[vagabond]

Made the trip out yesterday, finally had weather good enough to give it a go. Tried several spots for bait and found nothing but horn bellys. We hit a couple of numbers with some dead bait that was in the freezer without any takers. This lasted until app.3- 3:30 PM when we decided to bite the bullet and make the run to Bethel. On the way and app. a mile north east we saw the water boiling and birds diving and went over to check it out. Dolphin,the mammal not the fish, were hitting a huge school of minhaden there were litterly hundreds of the dolphin and about a acre ofthe menhaden as they would drive them to the surface the birds were there to nail them. I wish I had taken the video camera out it was some sight to see. The bait was so thick that you could throw a bait rig into the school and snag 3-4 at a time. We put about 30 in the well and went on to bethel. There were cigars, scaled sardeens, greenies, and pinfish. I have often caught a few pins there but yesterday if you let the rig hit bottom you had a load of pins. Near the marker the horn bellys were thick but out about 100 ft the bait was good. Anyway, finally with a livewell full of great bait it was back to the reef, getting on to about 4:30 by then. hit the reef a mile or so off bethel and with all that great bait still nothing. Just before sundown we decided to run north to some numbers almost due east of S.I. and set up for the evening bite that we hoped was comming. Until now we only had a few seabass in the cooler. About 30 min. after dark things started to improve. A 12 and an 18 lb "endangered" Gag were released along with a short or two of muttons and gags. Yesterday wasn't a hot bite but we ended the evening at about 10:30 with 4 Mangs 3 of which were 7-10 lbs and 1 at 3 lbs 2 keeper muttons 1was 11 lbs 1was 3 lbs. we had a pretty full cooler with a bunch of seabass. There was one draw back to the trip the blue fish were so thick that we would catch 10 blues for every snapper a pain but still a tug on the string. An absolutly beautiful night on the water a little choppy on the run out a little less on the way in.
Tight lines to all.
Tom
The Vagabond

[captfrankm]

Wow! I heard that the pogie pods outside Sebastian had Cobes on them on Sunday. Did you send one of those pogies you snagged back down. Sounds like the way we used to catch cobes back in the 80's and 90's. Haven't seen those bigger menhaden schools (pods) in years. Maybe this colder winter will change that.
_________________
"You can't catch em' from the damn COUCH"!

[vagabond]

No Cap we didn't take the time to try dropping on near the pod. As fast as they were moving a cobe would have been hard pressed to keep up. It was really a sight to see the dolphin were hitting them so hard that the school was really moving out.