Rene Canales Blue Marlin Catch

Nice Blue Marlin catch by Rene Canales! This beauty was caught in Kona, Hawaii last April,2011. Spring is just around the corner again! This Blue Marlin was 12 feet long and 470 lbs. Y'all have a great 2012 Fishin Season!

Dave Alexander

dave@justgofishin.com

http://tales.justgofishin.com

Instrument Navigation to the Land Cut

December has been a difficult month for fishing due to several Northern fronts moving into our area and making it difficult for the fair weather fishermen [me]. Yesterday morning on the 30th of December we had a window of opportunity to take a trip to the Land Cut for some fishing. Stopped by Clems Marina for some bait and learned that live shrimp was not available anywhere. So we picked up some live mullet and dead shrimp for the trip. Weather forecast said the morning fog would be burned off by 8:00am with south winds.

Mark, Charlie and I headed south about 7:30 in the morning only to find visibility to be about 20 to 30 feet ahead. Our GPS came in handy and aloud me to navigate by instrument and watching for the markers on the ICW. Cruising at about 30 mph I was able to determine approximately when I would see the next marker by using our GPS. As we got closer to Baffin Bay the fog became even thicker and visibility became more like about 10 feet in-front of us which forced me to reduce speed to 10 mph and losing my boat plain. Finally after getting close to rocky slough the fog became thinner and visibility aloud me to crank the boat up to about 40 mph. As we finally made it to our fishing spot at about 9:50am which made our boat ride almost 2 1/2 hours.

The fishing wasn't happening this day. The winds were coming out of the south which scatters the bait fish at the cut and the fish just were not biting. We moved around with similar results only catching a few under sized redfish.

Finally the wind gave us a break about 3:00 in the afternoon and shifted to Southeast winds. Just like clock work the fish were biting and we started to catch fish almost on every cast. And we caught about everything; redfish, black drum, speckled trout, and flounder all mostly on dead shrimp. They were all just under sized.

We had to pull up anchor and head back home while we still had daylight and left the Land Cut at 4:15pm. We made it home right at sunset. The day was a nice adventure using instrument navigation through the fog as the day turned into a sunny blue sky. Hm, Hm, Hm.

We'll get'em next time.

Dave Alexander

dave@justgofishin.com

Cooks, Cookin at the Texas Land Cut

Had a great time fishing the Land Cut with the Cooks. Elder and Sister Cook serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints enjoyed a day of fishing from their labors. I wasn't sure how the day might work out with Northeastern winds but we took a chance on it and paid off. We bundled up for the 55 minute trip to the land cut by boat. The weather was just beautiful to enjoy the great Texas outdoors.

Sister Cook caught this nice 22 inch black drum using live shrimp from Clems Marina. She sure kept a steady hand while landing this beauty on board our vessel.

Elder Cook was catching speckled trout right and left all day long. Many of these were undersized trout and released them back as soon as we caught them. Pictured above is one of the many Specks caught.

Watching where sister Cook caught her black drum, I took advantage of the same spot and landed this nice 26 inch black drum while Elder Cook was eating a sandwich. Then later Elder Cook caught a nice Speckled trout while I was eating a sandwich. There just isn't time to take a break ;o)

Great time with a lot of laughs! We were very happy with the action we had today. Northern winds can be difficult for a successful day. We felt like we were a day early for the great fishing since Thursday [next day] had expected southwest winds which are more desirable.

Dave Alexander

dave@justgofishin.com