# Fort Pickens Pier, 07-01-2010



## Gulflady (Jun 19, 2010)

"All" my sisters and I arrived at the pier at 4:45am, the air was cool with a northerly wind and clouds everywhere with the threat of rain. There were baby Lys staying around the pier with occasional thick schools of Shiners passing by. The current was slowly flowing eastward, making it easy to use a 3/4oz egg slip weight with a live shrimp on an 18" mono-leader off the end of the pier. We caught 4 Black Snapper, each one a foot long exactly. Then something hit my medium sized rod and reel making the drag scream, I couldn't muscle it in and in a few minutes it wrapped around a piling and freed itself. My sis who had taken a vacation day from work to go with us, then hooked on another screamer, but she had a bigger rod and reel set up and did muscle it in...a beautiful Gag Grouper! We didn't have the landing net today, so she walked it to shore....20 inches, 2 inches shy of being a keeper, so we released it. At 7:00am, our brother and his wife called (he's in town visiting from Vero Beach), he was at the gate at Fort Pickens and it was raining there and before paying the fee he wanted to be sure we were gonna be there a while in this weather. We said yeah, we had been lucky so far with the rain going all around us and there hadn't been any lightning at all. Before he reached us, a hard rain was on top of us, we huddled under our beach umbrellas while watching our poles for bites, the rain didn't last long tho and it was the only rain we got caught under. He took over throwing the bait net with no luck on the under sized bait, but caught several nice sized Pin fish for bait on a small rod, which we put out for Redfish or Grouper. The wind changed, coming in from the South/Southeast, perfect for a balloon but the Hardtails weren't biting today. There was the occasional school of Ladyfish, they are fun to catch and release. Around 9:30am, several schools of Ladyfish were in the area, one school ran in a school of baitfish and cornered them on the shore....Sis and I ran down to the beach with our Gotcha's, hoping some Spanish Macs were in them. No luck on the Spanish, but in the bunch of Ladyfish we caught, we did manage to get one Hardtail...on a gotcha of all things, finally! So Sis free-lined him off the end of the pier. Another Sis and our Sis-in-law, walked down the beach, eastward, past the big rock pile and fished off the point with live shrimp. She caught a Hardtail around 10:30am and walked him back to the pier for us to use...I put him King Mac leader with a balloon and told my Brother, he's all yours! We continued trying for more Black Snapper with no luck. Nothing touched the Hardtails at all. The high tide was at 11:48am in the pass, but after not seeing the tide line pass by the last 3 times we came out here, we decided not to wait for it and started packing up around 11:45am. Right when we were leaving, a fellow fisherboy caught a beautiful Spade fish! It had swallowed the hook and they had no pliers, so we unpacked and helped get the hook out, telling him how good eating that would be. As we were loading up the car on the road, we saw the tide line passing by!!!! Grrrrr, if only we had stayed another 30 minutes, lol! Anyway, all my siblings (4 girls and 1 boy) and I were fishing together for the first time in like 5 years, we had a great time!


The barge is still there, west of the pier between it and the red buoy, with a second barge attached to it's side. No boats ever came and got supplies off of it, guess cause of the weather. Around 10am, a busload of workers showed up, setting up their tents on the beach. On a couple of our visits, we noticed folks coming out on the pier taking and testing water samples. A Park Ranger came out on the pier, she said the water testing was showing the water was as good as it was on May 31, 2010. She did ask us if we ever saw oil in the water, to please report it. I told her the only oil in the water we had seen was like 1 foot by 1 foot big at the most and that could of come off a boat and it was very rare we saw that.


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## MacD (Feb 25, 2010)

Great report! Sounds like a blast with the family and the fish. You definitely had the bite of the day, I hit the jetties around 1 and then moved to the pier around 4 not much biting except for cats rays and hardtail. Only managed a few undersized flounder yesterday. How do you get on to the Ft so early in the morning I tried to go at 7 once and ended up waiting 30mins for the gate guard.


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## Gulflady (Jun 19, 2010)

Thanks, we did have a blast! One of my sisters has the Night Owl pass, costs about $30 per year. It allows you to get the gate code from the people at the gate to use to open the gate after hours. It changes every month and you can't get it by phone, you get the new code from a ranger at the gate by showing your Night Owl pass, your Gulf Islands yearly pass and a photo ID.


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## Snatch it (Feb 17, 2009)

Man that was a great report thanks!!!


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## DieselShark (Aug 6, 2010)

I sure would like to fish with you girls sometime..seems like you know what your doing! I like that!!!

Ill be out there tonight and later into satureday morning until after the sun sets to get some spanish...


whats your name ?


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