Crew: Tom, Captain, 1st Mate,Donny Brown, Kids: Daniel Adrien, Jeremy Adrien, Stephen Brown, Other crew: Lanny & Jason Hoyal
Moon:
Location:
SSI,GA Coast - G reef, R5 Tower
Species:
Category:
Report:
Bottom Fishing Trip for kids on spring break. Planned to fish G reef and perhaps run to Navy tower R5 if seas permitted.
Launched and departed on a slack tide. As soon as we left the St. Simon's channel we saw fish, birds & porpoise working schools of bait. We tried to pick up what I thought might be some spanish mackerel, but couldn't get close without driving them down. Kids enjoyed the porpoise sightings up close.
Picked up and headed out to our waypoint about 15 miles from the channel marker. Trolled stretch 30's at G reef with no bite despite seeing marking a lot of big fish suspended off the reef. Then anchored and fished with squid for black sea bass on good bottom on the artificial reef. Kids enjoyed good success on the bass.
We saw numerous sea turtles throughout the trip. We even had one mouth the bouy we deployed to mark our intended bottom fishing spot.
When the bite slowed, took advantage of the good seas, and ran out to the navy tower. The tower surprised us as we expected it to be much smaller than it actually was. We marked a tremendous amount of fish on the upwind & upcurrent side of the tower, about 10-15' off the bottom. We could not coax a bite. We trolled, jigged, & dropped squid, cut-bait, & small sea bass without so much as a bite.
Since the NCAA games were on with GA Tech scheduled to play, we called it a day & headed in. It took us more than 45 minutes to get $EA $ICKNE$$ on the trailer. The tide was coming in and the current & wind so strong I couldn't get the boat on the trailer. With the dock just upwind & upcurrent of the ramp, I had no room to nose the boat in above the trailer. We finally used lines from the dock and used the twin engines to walk the boat in at almost a 90 degree angle to the trailer. At the last minute, we let the bow drift into the trailer. This was a nightmare. We'll definitely plan our returns with the tides in mind if we use the SSI public launch again.
Daniel with nice sea bass.
Jeremy with nice bass.
Lanny with monster sea bass!
Donny, holding it close to the camera won't help this one look any bigger!
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