Pacemaker Fishing Forum

A group of my friends and myself rented a house down in Destin, Fl for this past week, and I have to say it was one of the best vacations I have ever been on! Everything from the food, weather, beach, and of course the fishing. I have never been saltwater fishing, but I have seen plenty of fishing shows that highlight saltwater fishing, so I had a general idea of what I was going to go up against.

We found a charter with a captain that seemed like he was a good guy, and he turned out being a great guy! The day started at 5:30am and we ran a few miles to fish the mouth of a little creek, and the goal of the trip was to fish the flats for sea trout, redfish, and one of the "big" fish (cobia, jack, or other). Oh, and all of this was on pretty light tackle (no baitcasters on board).



Check out this sunrise, there are fewer ways that are better to start the day than looking out and seeing this! It's good to see what Ernie sees!


We were using small live minnows and within a few minutes one of my friends was hooked up with a sea trout, and man was it freaking awesome to see the fish jump and even more so was it cool to see it teeth! I'm used to fishing for bass and bluegill so I had to remind myself that lipping the fish here was not a good idea! A few minutes later I felt a familiar thump and proceeded to reel set and this was one of the best fights I've had and it was only an averaged sized redfish! I did require a lesson on how to hold the fish, and I won't lie, I've never held a fish that way so it was rather interesting to say the least.


No shame, I am a total freshman when it comes to holding saltwater fish, or fish with actual teeth.


We proceeded to catch trout and redfish all throughout this little creek that widened out into a marina the further back we went. I don't want to say I got bored of catching, but I wanted to feel like I had to work for a fish, so when one of my friends saw a big crevalle jack swim past the boat, our captain asked if anyone knew how to use a spook-like topwater (called a topdawg.) My prayers had been answered! I absolutely love topwater, I mean who doesn't?! So to skip past some boring details, we fished for about 2.5 more hours, and they caught more trout and redfish with a few ladyfish mixed in. I did for a few casts go to using live bait but I readily picked up the topwater bait after catching a ladyfish.

The trip was just about done, we had made a "hero run", as our captain called it, to this large flat that looked very promising but had produced very few fish. I did have some sea trout go after my bait but the didn't fully commit. So get this. I finish my last cast, take the GoPro off (classic mistake) and put the rod down. All of a sudden our captain yells some words not fit for this forum and says that some crevalle jacks are schooling close by! I grab the rod and since I've been throwing it practically non-stop for the past 2.5 hours, I see the violent frenzy of feeding demons, and nail the cast spot on. I work the bait at a steady pace, and holy smokes I swear my hands were shaking like crazy. All of a sudden, a huge blowup. My rod doubles down and my reel goes berserk. Safe to say if by some tragic disaster, the world ended right there, I would have been at somewhat peace. Anyways since it's a light rod we end up fighting the fish for about 2 hours, but we could have ended it much sooner but we had an issue netting it. Then a huge shark showed up and the fish got a second, and third wind. I started to cup the reel and we all know what happened, we've all been there. I cupped a little too much and pulled back a little too much, and *pop* the freaking line broke and the leader. This is also due in part to the braid getting wrapped on the fish's tail a few times. The fish had to be 20-30lbs easy.

But I couldn't have been more happy with the trip, now I can't wait to get back out there and do it all over again! Minus the breaking off part of course.


What could have been!


Awesome time with awesome people.