We told the family about the crabbing spot we went to yesterday and a few of them wanted to try fishing off the pier that was there. The cousins decided to head down in the morning to try our luck. We had room for one more in the car, so my dad tagged along. We stopped in to TW’s Bait and Tackle to pick up fishing licenses for a few of us and also pick up some lures that other people had success with off the pier.
We got to Pirate’s Cove at about 10am. Even at mid-morning, the sun was really hot when not in the shade. Fortunately, the pier area was in shade at this time of day. Everyone but Tim, my crabbing partner from yesterday, was going to fish. Tim started out at the dock where we started yesterday since it was also in the shade. The rest of us tried out the new lures, made by Got-cha.
After about an hour of casting, all I had caught was a small cluster of oysters, so I decided to see how Tim was doing. By this time he had moved to the channel where people were catching a lot of crab yesterday because he wasn’t catching any crab in his first spot. The only problem is that it was in direct sun. But he had about 6 crab grab his line that he couldn’t get into his net.
Having had no luck fishing, I decided to go after crab with Tim instead. Just like Tim, I was getting a crab on my hand line pretty much every time I pulled it in. But these crab were smarter than the ones we caught yesterday. They would take off the second they saw a net.
About another half hour later, my cousin, Julie, came down with the cheap crabbing net she had bought at TW’s earlier that morning. The three of us spent the next few hours trying to pull crab out of the water, with only marginal success. We ended up with 5 small crab and losing at least a dozen, probably more.
The fisherman didn’t do as well. They kept catching little croakers only about 6″ long. None of them worth keeping. I went to check on them at about 12:30 and happened to watch as my cousin, Chris, catch a nice 13″ fish! He was using one of the Got-cha lures. We all quick started to cast.
My brother said he had three nibbles, but none that he could hook. The rest of us didn’t feel anything. Our experience has been that fish school a lot in saltwater, but we couldn’t catch any more than that one.
We found out later that the fish Chris caught was a speckled trout. Chris ate it for a late night snack just a few minutes ago.
Fishing has been pretty disappointing so far, but tomorrow we’ll be renting a pontoon that ten of us will be on. Hopefully, we’ll have more luck.
