# Gulf Report: 7-14-2011



## Kingfish880 (Jun 6, 2011)

_OK, I will apologize beforehand: I have no idea why my pictures are so big. I never have problems like this. I'm assuming Photobucket is busy having an asthma attack. _

Made it down to Chickebone beach around 5:30 Thursday morning to find the wind nearly ripping the flag from the pole out of the north. My dad and I launched anyways because the surf looked manageable. 

I brought heavy spinning rod for King or Tarpon and my 8 wt. fly rod for King (and God forbid, Tarpon). We trolled diving plugs for close to 5 hours without picking up anything. 










I don't think I've ever paddled that hard for that long in all my years of kayak fishing and for a while, I worried that I'd be stranded after both of my arms simply fell off and floated away. 

We did manage to put a quite a few Cigar Minnows, Hard tails, and Threadfin Herring in the yaks using sabiki rigs, but only had a few small spanish hit them. One even managed to hit my King rig and miss both treble hooks. 










My dad hooked into a nice spanish that did something I'd never seen. It hit a slow trolled cig, then proceeded to come straight at his boat, jump out of the water, and clear his head by at least a foot, landing on the other side. From my angle, it looked like it just about hit him in the back of the head. 

The Tarpon were out in full force. I only managed to throw to one of them because every time I saw one, I was trolling a lure. Sadly, he wasn't interested in my lure with wire leader. Over the course of the morning I saw a total of 6 Tarpon with my dad seeing 3. 

Around 9:30, the wind slacked off completely and it became glassy smooth out. 










Since I was no longer being rocked around by swells, it only makes sense that a boat with a para-sail would come within 50 yards of me and throw an enormous wake...TWICE. Once headed east, and again heading west. 










I also paddled out to what looked like a fellow kayaker at a distance. He looked kinda funny though...like he had -very- square shoulders. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be this buoy. 










There was another one maybe 3/4 of a mile south...probably labeled "B". I assume these were for the airshow? 

Anyways, the Kings were mysteriously absent. Big schools of cigs and other bait were getting balled up offshore, but it looked like only spanish were tearing into them. Neither my dad nor I saw any sign of King activity and ended the day catching and releasing only 3 spanish. The wind shifted and came out of the south around 11:00 and we called it quits at 12:00 before the seas built back up. 

And something I feel I should note: My dad was first to shore and I saw he was greeted by a little life guard who ran down with his floaty to talk to him. Turns out, we aren't allowed to put in or take out the yaks between these two yellow poles down at the chickenbone public beach. If you want to launch, it has to be outside of these poles. Apparently any "hard objects" are dangerous to swimmers. We thanked the lifeguard for the future information and I told him that I hoped to never prop-chop a swimmer with my plastic yak. I did, however, bite my tongue and didn't tell him that from the look of the swimmers I might injure with the yak, it'd be best to put up some manatee 'no wake' zones. 

Anyways, I hope to get back out there again soon once my arms are re-attached. Maybe the Kings will be out. Till next time, 

Fish on...


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## MrFish (Aug 21, 2009)

Great report. LMAO about the prop-chop!!


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## Yaksquatch (Mar 23, 2009)

Alex,

Great pics man! Too bad the fish didn't cooperate though.

Thanks for the info on the launch point. Though sometimes, ya just gotta land where the wind and surf puts ya.

Alex


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## LukeS (Jun 26, 2011)

Life Guard did the same to us last time we landed at Chicken bone, said we weren't allowed to land/fish between the posts. We asked him to direct us to a sign stating no landing here. Left us alone after that.


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