Today was a beautiful day to be on the water. We made it to the dock about 6:30am. It was really foggy, but I expected it would burn off quickly. We loaded the boat and set out about 6:45am.

Tania wanted to start off in the turn basin near the barge, where she lost the larger fish last week. When we got over there, the barge was gone. I am assuming it was moved in preparation for hurricane Nicole. Since it wasn’t there, we started to scan the bottom looking for anything holding fish.

When we moved in front of the Monarch Princess, we marked lots of fish. Since we marked fished, we anchored up and started fishing the bottom. It didn’t take long for June to hook up with a Jack Crevalle. We fished here for about 30 minutes; in which time we caught several Jack Crevalle and multiple catfish. I have a rule that once we catch our second catfish, we move spots.

For our second spot we moved to the northwest end of the yacht yard. Within a few minutes June caught a 14-inch Crocker! I was happy to be putting a fish in the cooler. Tania and I were not getting any bites, but we were happy to see June getting bites and catching fish. We noticed Tarpon rolling all over the place and chasing the bait fish; however, I did not bring the gear to target them, I packed lite today.

Our third spot was drifting south of the South Causeway bridge. We did 3 drifts and we only caught catfish, so we moved over to the Smithsonian dock. With the cooler water we were hopeful to catch some sheepshead or even a few snappers. We fished the dock for about 15 minutes without a single bite, so we decided to move on to another spot.

The next spot was the mouth of Harbor Isle marina. We drifted the opening with banana jigs tipped with shrimp. It didn’t take long for June to catch a Jack Crevalle. Shortly after that Tania got a Ladyfish. We ended up drifting here for about an hour and caught many fish, including another Croaker. Most of what we were catching were Ladyfish and Jack Crevalle, but we did see a big school of Crockers and that was why we stayed there so long. I am guessing with everything stirred up from the hurricane, they were well feed as they didn’t seem to want to bite.

We ended up moving to one final spot. We fished the flats south of Harbor Isle. After catching two catfish, I decided to call it a day. I had fish in the cooler, so to me it was a successful day.

While we were at this spot, we also got to watch a Falcon 9 rocket go into space! I thought it was a great bonus to our day. We also saw several boats washed up on shore and others sunk. It’s sad seeing the damage from the hurricane.

We made it back to the dock around 11:00am. It wasn’t our best day of fishing, but we came home with some fish and some good memories were made. I pray everyone who made it out this weekend had tight lines!