Crystal River 2-20 with Snookspanker. At last a warm sunny day.

Moon Shadow

Left the Fort Island ramp around 9 am with high hope and beautiful weather on ours side. A sight for sore eyes after all the cold windy day.





Today we were going the whole 9 yards and let ours hair down to catch some fish. In my case one would have to have hair to let it down. Pete took us out to some rock piles in search of some sheepheads. Pete caught the first fish a 17 inch trout and tossed it in the cooler, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. We never did find that sheephead it was like looking for a needle in a hay stack. WE started catching porgies, we caught more Porkies than you could shake a stick at. It was easy as pie to catch them. Pete got bit off a couple of time, a miss is as good as a mile.

While out there we ran into Mario, Pete talked to him while we drifted by. Took a picture but it came out
bad.



We headed closer to shore heading in as the crow flies. The water was so clear it was like being on a glass bottom boat. I saw dozens of rays and several more sea life.

Click on picture for a very short video.



White pelicans were visiting from up north.



To finish ours day we went up river and added trout, ladyfish and a yellowtail. Had a great day, good company, a great boat ride and catching dozens of fish, several trout between 12 and 17 inches, and porkies on every cast. Hope to do it again soon.

We tried several baits from lures and soft plastic, about used every type of solf bait I had in my tacklebox with little luck. cut bait, frozens shrmips seem to work the best. I basicly gave up using frozens shrmips but from now one I going to have some on hand. I pince off a piece of Gulp to catch porkies after porgies. Could of fill the cooler up with them. The conditions were sunny with a light chop on the gulf. Water temp was between 65 on the gulf to 70 in the river. The ramp was not that busy at the time of launching and loading.

The day wasn't done for me yet. I checked out more of Florida landscape with a hike in the back county. Also I was lucky, the deer wasn't. On the drive home I hit a deer on Route 24. I stop and expected to see heavy damage to the car. There was none. I was surprise. The deer must of ran away.

Pictures of my hike after fishing.

Quad32x

Sounds like an all around good day ... sep for the deer skuffage. lol.

Snook Spanker

Well Mooner> Yes it was a fine day to be alive and out on the water w/ You! Sorry to hear you had a run in w/ a deer on yer ride home! I can't believe you went out hiking around after being out in the sun, heat and wind reeling in all those porgy's! I went home and washed the boat and cleaned my one feesh! Don't Ya just hate it when you catch a nice keeper at the start of the day and figure yer gonna add more to yer cooler and then don't? I mean I caught that 17" fat trout on a piece of cut porgy out behind the boat w/ a 5/0 "J" hook snap swiveled to a wire leader under a float trying for the Spanny's that were cutting me off while trying for sheephead off the other side of the boat! How stupid can a trout be> Leader Shy> I think NOT! So if they were that easy to catch that early> I assumed> Well never mind!
In Moon's video it looks like we may have been chopping up the seagrass but it was actually about 3' deep and on plane we were running well over the grass! The water was so clear in there just coming in North of Homosassa in the St. Martins River channel. We tried fishing some holes around the channel which looked great but produced nothing but a pinfish that tried to swallow my Mirrodine> all three treples in his lil mouth!! There wasn't enough water to get into the Keys yet for redfishin so we just ran back out the way we came in and headed North to our regular fishing spots which weren't too good either! We tried Rocks, drop-offs to 20', around the scallop rack, flats from 10' to 2' and every depth in between and just couldn't find a pattern! We even floated and casted in pass Mullet Key and the White Pelican Parade along w/ some Kayaker's beached on the back of the Key along w/ some heinous stink that had my eyes watering!! When we got back in the river it was packed w/ boats and Sheriffs! Saw two Sheriff's boats, one flew past us in a hurry and then other was eyeballing everyone who passed them including our fine looking craft> Couldn't believe they didn't stop us the way our luck was going? All in all a nice day on the water w/ a friend! We came! We fished! The fish won this time! We'll get em next time when the wind is howling and the rain clouds are all around us!! It was just too nice a day for the fish to bite!!!

davidk5316

You guys must of have a blast out there. Too bad you couldn't come up with at least 1 more trout, you might have had a weight watchers meal there. If nothing else, the story was worth the read. Thanks guys and have more fun another day.......
Great pictures!!!!!!!!!!!

capt louie

Sounds like the porgy migration is in full swing :cool:

At least you got to drive :driver:

Landlocked_

Porgies were all we could manage last sheepie trip too, at least y'all got out, enjoyed each others company, the great weather and didn't break anything

PONCE

Nice boys!

Triple Threat 33T

To say that the weather cooperated would be an understatement. Nice change after some of the weather we've had recently.

Talk about taking advantage of a beautiful day, you guys did that and then some.

Great report and the pictures are excellent. We love seeing pictures of fish but the pictures of the area, landscape, wildlife and other things that you experience really make a big difference and add a whole other perspective to a report.

Tight work! :beer

Redbonz

:thumbsup

ripnlips

It was cool runnin into you guys out there. We didn't do so well either. We ended up with a sampler platter of 1 sheepshead 1 black sea bass 1 trout 1 spanny mack. We did end up with a big snook too, pushing 20 pounds.