July 4th weekend report

Well, i came down to Miami for the 4th and fished quite a bit.

On Friday i did a little trolling with the kayak down in the intracoastal. I used a rapala X rap for trolling. I caught a cuda, a few jacks and a grover ( with i thought was unusual given that i was trolling a lure).

here are a few pics of the cuda.

On saturday i fished for a little bit during the day, once again in the intracoastal with no luck except a few small jacks. Saturday night was a different story. Using frozen pilchards as bait, me and a buddy of mine caught about 15-20 mangrove snappers between us. Most were pretty small, but i have a picture of the biggest one. It is the largest mangrove snapper i have caught to date.

Sunday i didn't fish, but instead i spent the day at the hardrock casino, and finished up 500 bucks playing blackjack!

On monday i decided to go to halouver inlet with some sabiki rigs to catch bait to use off the dock later that evening. Within an hour i had caught about 15 nice sized pichards, which i quickly put in aerator bucket. At about 6 o'clock i headed out to the dock (Intracoastal, between hallandale rd. bridge and william leman causeway bridge) to see if i could catch anything on my live baits. It turned out to the the single best day of fishing i have ever had off the dock. Unfortinatley i was fishing by myself so getting pics was touch, but i managed to get a few. Every single one of my 15 pichards got hit. I landed 4 tarpon within the first hour and half. I had about 10 tarpon hits in all, but some never hooked up, and i got broken off twice. The tarpon were little guys, my guess would be all of them ranged from 10 pounds to 20 pounds. I also has a nice snook right up to the dock that spit the hook just as i was about to reach down and grab it. These were the first snook or tarpon i have ever caught off the dock in 5 years of living there. The rest of the baits caught 1 cuda, and 2 or 3 nice jacks.

Oh and i forgot to mention, I shark fished for 3 nights from the dock, had one nice run, no hook ups at all. However, i did have a little shark come right up to my chum bag and rip the bag to shreds.

I hope everyone had a nice july 4th weekend. Im heading back to baltimore tomorrow, and wont be back down to florida for a few months. I hope to see you guys get some monster sharks in the coming months.