Pacemaker Fishing Forum

Hit the water about 9pm for my first saltwater kayak trip of the year. Another yakker who was leaving told me the bite was slow, and the water temperature had dropped significantly in the past 24 hours. Not what I wanted to hear! The weather conditions were already bad enough, with air temps in the 40s and winds in the teens.

I headed to one of my favorite spots and anchored up with the wind blowing at my back. I switched off between a Mirrolure and a Mud Mino paddletail, and it took about 30 minutes to get that first unmistakeable 'bump' of a speckled trout. That one was 16" or so.



I stayed on that spot for at least 90 minutes, and was able to hook into 6 or 7 more trout between 12 and 19". It wasn't real fast action, but steady, I probably had a bite every 10-12 minutes. Only thing I got any action on was the paddletail, no fish love for the Mirrolure or jerkbait.

I pulled anchor and headed out to look for some bluefish. Before I found any blues, I hit a well-lit boat dock and C&R'd a few small but hard-fighting schoolie stripers. The wind was brutal in this spot, I would make a cast and only get about 5 turns of the handle before having to reel in and reposition.



Worked my way into the back of a pocket where I landed another trout and my first bluefish of the night. I trolled around that area,picked up 2 more blues on a Lucky Craft pointer, and also lost something heavy, before moving on. Another stop in another pocket yielded the same thing as the last one: another trout and another bluefish, in addition to several missed hits.

I get a kick out of this house whenever I fish here. It's like they're always ready for a party, but nobody's ever there.



The action slowed quite a bit, and the cold wind was now combined with some rain, so I fished my way back towards the ramp. I caught a few more trout in various locations, and a couple more bluefish (and lost several blues) before pulling out around 4am. In total I kept 7 specks from 16-19" and released 7 or 8 that were anywhere from 12-18". I also kept 5 bluefish.



I spent most of the early morning driving around VB, and also got a little shuteye when I found a good parking spot.

At 10am (I think) I went to the shoreline fishing area at Rudee inlet to do some floundering  from the rocksin the wind and cold. I got the corner spot and started throwing a 3" Gulp shrimp on a 3/8 jighead into the outgoing tide. Early on I lost what felt like a keeper flounder, and then 10 minutes later caught one at 17.5". I'm pretty sure it was the same fish I had lost earlier.

Around noon I hear a BOOM like a grenade went off or something, and big cloud of black smoke appeared to the West.





It wasn't until an hour or two later that another fisherman told me it was an F-18 that crashed into an apartment building. Sounded like it was going to be a tragic situation, but I heard later that nobody was killed. Amazing.

I fished from the rocks for a couple more hours with only one one more little flounder to show for it. I thought about launching my kayak again, but the wind was terrible and was only supposed to get worse, so I headed home from there. I probably should have waited for rush hour to subside...traffic was horrendous.

Here's the final takehome. The weather sucked, but it was still a great trip!