High Bridge - Oct 21 & 23, 2019

My dad came down for a visit and to do some fishing. He’s never really been a fisherman but definitely has more patience than my wife.
Figured we would go out in the kayaks a couple days and use the boat a couple. Kayak fishing on Sunday and Tuesday was enjoyable and nice scenery, etc but the fishing was real slow.
Mon Oct 21, high tide at 7:04
Comedy of errors from the start. Haven’t had my boat out in a couple months and everything was packed up prior to the hurricane. Not having everything where it normally is and can see it screwed me up big time. Pulled the boat out from my dock at 7:00am. Got to the end of our canal and returned for the fishfinder/gps. Left again and once again turned around when I got to the ICW to come back for the trolling motor remote. Made it down to High Bridge three miles away and dropped my trolling motor. Remote keeps turning off after indicating a “B” on display. Realize I had removed my spare battery months ago when out with my father-in-law. Still no idea how battery depleted so fast but no choice to go back to house and run to town for a CR2450 battery. Get back home, replace battery and have same problem. Realize remote battery was not bad, the electric trolling motor plug had come loose...
9:15 and we are finally fishing. Live shrimp on the menu for the day. Took about two hours and we had a limit of Black Drum. Topped that off by getting a double hookup on the ones that put us over the limit, as well as the largest for the morning. After that we tried shrimp on a jig head in some spots I have caught flounder before, but had no luck. I also pitched some artificials and had a few hits but no hookups. While catching the Black Drum my dad also caught a 14.75” Trout and we both brought in a couple small Cats. Back to the house to clean the boat and fish at about 1:00.
Will try for a repeat in the morning and follow-up with an update to this report.

 

When the successful trip starts to feel like work:

 

Wed Oct 23, high tide at 9:15, on the water at 7:00am with a load of live shrimp. Nice cool and breezy morning. Fished way back in the west end with no success. Ran in to one other fellow who had picked up a couple small Reds but they eluded us. I had no strikes on my topwater plug all morning. Live shrimp brought in bunches of catfish. We moved a couple times because that’s all we were getting. We managed to get five Black Drum again but probably had to deal with 3-4 cats for every Drum. I got one little Sheepshead that was just shy of legal. Knocked off around noon when the live shrimp ran out. Fried a mess of fish for an early supper and ran my dad back to the airport.


Video:
http://www.shrimpnfishflorida.com/forums/threads/high-bridge-black-drum.16168/