Spontaneous trip to the Gulf

Friday morning around 7:00 a.m., right as Rachel was leaving work, both of us decided to go to Florida. She worked Thursday night, meaning we were running on 26 hours with no sleep by the time we arrived late Friday night.

It was the best decision we’ve made in a while. Also, add the Jones to mix, and we’ve got ourselves a party.

I always carry a fly rod with me where ever we go. Just in case. The weather at the gulf has been ideal with one minor flaw; the wind. Temperatures hovering around the mid to low 60s the entire time with winds from 20-7,000 mph (the most beautiful hurricane ever).

Saturday kept us off the fly rods. The winds almost kept us off the jetties. Relentless, nonetheless, we journeyed out to the end of the jetties, cast our spinning reels and spent the afternoon on the rocks.

Saturday skunked me, but Drew, on the other hand, hooked into a pretty spot tail. Despite a few promising bumps and pops that’s all we came up with on Saturday.

Sunday came and the winds showed promise of subsiding. I figured since we’d be leaving early on Monday, I might as well take advantage of my last chance to wet a fly.

I picked my favorite fly out the box (you can probably guess which one that is) and made my way down/around/between the rocks to find a suitable spot to hook something. At first, I didn’t receive much action outside of the occasional bump. It took some time to hone into the exact spots that were producing, but once I found the right spots the fish weren’t bashful.

I’m not sure what they are (I think they’re called Pinfish). They aren’t big, but boy do they love a clouser minnow. They aren’t much bigger than palm size (think decent sized sunfish), and they fight like crazy. More times than not I knew I hadn’t hooked another one because the fight was bigger in this one than the last.

Every time I was wrong.

I spent the afternoon hauling ’em in until the sunset. It was a lot of fun. They beat my fly up, and they were a chore to get off the hook. You could feel the strength of the small fish whenever trying to take one off of the hook.

Every fish had dark vertical stripes and yellow to blue iridescent horizontal stripes. Each also had a set up spines on the back that weren’t easy to keep down. They seem to be suitable baitfish if you have the rig capable to go a couple of steps up (I don’t mind taking small fish on small tackle). Still, they were beautiful fish.

The trip was fantastic, and I’m ready to go back and sling some flies. I have plenty of ideas for what to try on the next trip. For now, though, I’m going to try and figure out what it was I kept reeling in this weekend.

Enjoy the rest of the pictures