# Fort Pickens Pier 06162010



## Gulflady (Jun 19, 2010)

My sisters and I arrived at the pier about 5:15am. Hardtails and baby red snappers (snappers were released asap) were biting on live and dead shrimp and cut bait (cigar minnows). Large lys were biting on un-baited piscator rigs. The hardtails were about 8 inches long, so we were releasing them, thinking they would be too large for bait. After a couple hours of nothing hitting the large lys or whole cigar minnows (frozen), we decided to try a large hardtail and voila! The first King Mackerel was too large to get into the landing net, and after missing him a few times with the gaff he finally spit the hook out and swam away. The second strike bit the hardtail completely in half, a very clean cut so we determined it to have been a King. Then we had a bite that took the bait without the hook getting set. The second one was around 9am, and was my baby sister's first time to catch a King... what a beauty he was measuring at 4 feet exactly! Thanks to a fellow fisherman who gaffed him for us, we had grilled King Mackerel tonight. Around 10am the hardtails and large lys moved on and the bites from the Kings stopped coming. We only saw one school of what could of been Spanish, but they never came close enough to the pier to cast for.

Workers were putting out booms from the pass, coming towards the pier. They had gotten to the first rock pile to the west when we left. We plan to go again on Tuesday and hope the boom won't be in the way of fishing from the pier. The boom on the east of us never came close to interfere with fishing, yes it was loose on one end and moving with the current, but it was too short to reach the pier.










http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/143/m_d5e20487bd0b40cd865edbd72a9dfdf1.jpg
http://http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/143/m_d5e20487bd0b40cd865edbd72a9dfdf1.jpg


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## letsgofishin (Oct 2, 2007)

Great report.Glad to hear ppl getting on the kings.


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