I've been doing this for a while as a way to share my fishing with my Dad since he can't do stream fishing anymore. My Hero 5 died so I picked up a Hero 12 on Black Friday. Had looked at the DJIs but decided to stick with GoPro. Unfortunately now my old Macbook Pro can't handle the Hero 12 codex so I have to edit on my phone until I can pick up a used mac mini or something.
That’s why I did it. I’d load to YouTube and send him the video. My oldest is starting to want to fish so hope I can get good video of him.
Tried a small stream. The water was still up and fast. Hooked a good one that tore off into a log, otherwise just a couple strikes.
He sent me a few pictures of a couple of them. Again, they were < 8 inches when they took them out of the stream. This goes to show that Southern Appalachian brookies could grow big if they had the food. I told him they need to figure out how to stock bugs in the streams.
Wife and I did a waterfall hike at a place I like to fish in the summer. Took the rod and managed to catch one with the water cool at 40 F.
Sold my boat and bought a 27 foot twin 250 Sea Hunt Game Fish 27-2018 model. About to be getting into pelagics and have no idea what I'm doing. Going to get rods and reels for trolling and heavier fish. Wahoo, yellowfin tuna, AJs, blackfin tuna, swordfish. I guess even Marlin is a possibility. Gonna pay a guide to go with me on it and teach me the ropes on trolling and catching blue water species. Going to get Hiltons for sea surface temps, temp breaks, water color/chlorophyll, bathymetrics, etc. Also have to get auto pilot so I don't have to manually hold a course for 80+ miles. And no radar so have to get that. So probably another $10k in crap for the boat. Then probably $10k in rods/reels and that's doing the rod/reel cheap. 180 gallon tank honestly feels a bit light for a 27 foot boat but my range will be about 360 miles. The rigs that hold tuna and pelagics are about 80-100 miles out. So easily within range on good weather days. Shit is about to get crazy. Boat probably getting delivered next week or the week after. My wife is going to hate me for all the money and time I spend on this.
A new person to the area asked if someone could take him out, so I took him to the local DH river. Had a nice acrobatic brown toss my fly.
Resupply trip today with my youngest. It's like I blacked out and woke up at the cash register super confused by my total.
Was shooting for catching a wild SC brown, rainbow, and brook in the same day but got signal and a text from my wife asking me to come home as I pulled up to the brook trout stream parking. Maybe next week.
One of my neighbors sold his offshore boat and is selling all his gear. Gonna buy his Penn Squall 50vsw , pinnacle rod, and aftco rod butt for $400. The Squall 50vsw has the same guts as an international 50 but is made of graphite. You can pretty much catch anything in the ocean other than a 1000 pound Marlin with it. I want it for targeting yellowfin tuna and could also horse up giant grouper or any sort of bottom fish. Can use it to troll for wahoo. A mid range rod/reel setup for a 50 class reel from Shimano is about $1100 new. I'm thinking I'll do a mix of used and new to get started. They are catching 180-200 pound class tunas out at the east lump right now but I'm probably going to miss the window for it by the time I get all this gear and tackle together. You can catch schoolie YFT in the 60-80 range maybe a little bigger during the summer so might have to settle for that. On a side note ran the new boat for the 2nd time last weekend and hit 58 mph. It will let me get way offshore in a hurry.
Picked up my deep dropping set up yesterday I have one 50 and one 30 already on rods. both used. This is what i’m leaning towards to complete my tuna/pelagic set up. Couldn’t find a lot on facebook marketplace that was a good deal, not a far drive, and in good condition. So all of this is new and mostly slightly below retail through sea2swamp (might also see if Wayne Lees will do a better deal but they arent gonna shave off tons either way maybe a few hundo) -TLD 50ii $419 -TLD 30ii $319 -2x Saragossa 18k $339-$678 total for 2 -Saragossas paired with Tallus PX Rods $209 x 2=$418 -Rods For the TLD 50 and 30-SHIMANO TALAVERA BLUEWATER ROLLER TIP UNI-BUTT CONVENTIONAL RODS-$199 each x2=$398 ———————- Total $2232 https://www.airmar.com/Product/TM265LM 1kw transducer reads bottom perfectly in 1000 feet Simrad Halo 20+ radar getting installed tomorrow and the plugs/oulets for the deep drop rods https://www.simrad-yachting.com/simrad/type/radar/halo20simradradar/ Then gotta buy 1,3,5# deep drop leads, multi hook deep drop rigs, heavy fluro, probably some wahoo lures like islanders. Then I’m gonna go fuck up some fish
Here I am looking at o rings and finesse hooks for some wacky rig bank fishing Spoiler Found a $25 Walmart gift card in my wallet
White bass are running. Hit our limit in 3.5 hours. Camping at the lake and gonna try and get after them again tomorrow. Afternoon is gonna be spent fileting and drinking beer trying to catch crappie from our campsite.
Heavy rain led to fast water. Made fishing tough. Then tried a couple brook trout streams with no takers
All the forecasts all week were calling for 1 foot or less and low wind on Saturday. According to the most recent chlorophyll shots on Hiltons there was clean water around the lumps near the VK900 rigs (about 90 mile south of Ocean Springs) and also there was a good 10 degree temperature break in that area. Also had some good reports of tuna in that area. The plan was to pick up bait at some shallow rigs at MP108 , around 60 miles south of Ocean Springs, then run the remaining 40 miles to VK 100. When we woke up Saturday morning the NOAA weather buoy 60 miles south of Dauphin Island was reading 3-4 footers. A storm blew through on Friday night and we figured the gulf was churned up a bit. Around 4:30 AM on Saturday morning we discussed possibly canceling but decided to just get out there and if it sucked we could turn around. Trailored the boat to the marina and filled up the 180 gallon gas tank on the Sea Hunt Gamefish 27 , put 240 pounds of ice in the coffin box, grabbed a flat of frozen pogies and we shoved off the dock at about 6AM in the dark. Got some good practice running by just chart and radar. Kept it about 25-30 mph. The sun came up around Horn Island and we no longer had to run by radar. There was a little chop on the way to MP108 but it wasn't terrible. We got to MP108 and hooked up our sabiki rigs. On my first sabiki toss I picked up 4 spanish mackerel which we later used for chunk bait. It wasn't easy making bait. We picked up about 10-15 fat big hard tails but it took probably 2 hours of circling around these rigs throwing sabikis and working them trying to make bait which put us behind schedule. At 108 an oil rig worker threw out his morning potatoe peels from whatever food he was making and I was smashed in the face by potatoe peels to my amazement. I thought a seagull had shit on me and was just bewildered until the rig worker shouted down "Sorry!" Eventually we said to hell with the bait and it was time to head south. On the way to VK 900 we stopped at a rig somewhere past the City Rigs but before VK 900 to see if we could mark anything but to no avail. As we approached the VK900 rig, we noticed a big buoy a few hundred yards in front of the rig in about 300 feet of water. We put out the stretch 30s and trolled around the buoy seeing if we could pick up a bonita for chunk bait /black fin or a wahoo by chance. There was a Freeman right on top of VK 900 with an angler bowed over big time and we figured he had a big AJ on the line. We made some passes trolling around the rig but giving the Freeman their room but didn't catch anything trolling. There is a lump not far from VK900 that was the ultimate destination and we could see some boats on it in the distance. The radio chatter was that they were marking tuna but couldn't get them to eat. We eased on out to them and set up a drift over the lump. We cut up the mackerel and some pogeys and started throwing them in the water. We were getting some marks on the sonar. I was letting line out of a 50 W through the rod tip just letting my hook buried in chunk drift on down with the other chunks. After a long period of time I figured it was time to reel it up and start over. Right around that time a black fin hit my line because when I started to reel back up I realized I had something heavy on the line. We gaffed him and had a stud blackfin in the boat. Probably around 30 pounds. I guess the chunks had them all horny because now we were marking them pretty thick on the sonar. Immediately after that Adam dropped down a butterfly jig around 100 feet where they were marking and immediately hooked up to another big blackfin. I gaffed him and now we figured with about 60 pounds of blackfin in the boat at least the trip wasn't a failure and we had a solid meat haul bare minimum. We thought we'd have more luck now with so many marks and drifted several more times along the same lump route chunking and throwing jigs but never had another bite. We still wanted to do some deep dropping and put some groceries in the boat and had about a 3 hour ride back in so we decided to give up on the chunking and run further south to do some deep dropping. We used my brand new tanacoms for the first time which was really cool. I had some deep drop rigs with about 5 hooks each and you tie a weight at the end. I was using a 4 pound weight. We were dropping in 400-550 feet of water. It's badass just hitting a button and the reel brings them up from 500 feet. We did get tangled up a few times with the two deep drop rod lines getting tangled. Adam had some spots out there in the general area and we just bounced around from spot to spot. We were pulling up big snapper at first, and they are out of season. We figured as we moved deeper we would get away from the ARS. That was the ticket as the last spots in the 400-550 foot range we started picking up beeliners. Sometimes multiple ones on the same rig. At 3PM we decided it was time to head in. It was smooth seas on the way in and I ran 45 miles per hour all the way home and we made great time. The final tally was 2 black fin and about 6 beeliners so not an epic meat haul but for the first trip out in the new boat it was an awesome trip in my opinion.
might have accidentally fished private water today. i fought the largest rainbow i’ve seen in years, i got it to my net twice and could not pull it in. 30 minutes later i hooked another of equal size and it ran off under a ledge and snapped me off. one side of the bridge is maintained by a guide service, but i thought the other was open…. anyways i did land one nice rainbow
Tale of two brook trout streams. One with no action, the second with a few to the net and a bunch jerks get off.
Tiffin what state are you seeing the white bass run? still waiting here in OK. These cold fronts keep rolling in and delaying everything.
That was down in the rivers around Lake Millwood is SW Arkansas. We generally use the redbuds blooming as a sign to start keeping a close eye out. Checked temps/barometer/solunar calendar. Just found a few days that lined up and went for it.
Electric reel outlets got installed today and the 1 KW Airmar transducer. It is massive. We are planning on doing a deep drop trip on Friday. Probably run about 70 miles to the first spots and venture out around 100 miles. Probably hit a mixture of rigs and natural bottom for grouper, beeliners, tilefish, and whatever else we can manage. We're also going to get a swordfish charter soon. I got some numbers and areas to drift for swordfish but we want to get some inside tips and tricks before attempting it ourselves.
You can start practicing tonight by leaning a broomstick over a chair and try to stare at it for 13 hours.
There are some areas about 90-100 miles south where they are tearing up swordfish. High volume. But that's charter guys that are really good at it.