Jetty Fishing

Finally got a chance this afternoon to wet a line, do some jetty fishing, and try for another Dauphin Island bull redfish.

Working out of town gives me a chance to fish a lot of areas, and today it was the east jetties at Dauphin Island.

The weather was not great.  The air temperature was 52 degrees F, it was overcast, and there was a misty rain falling when I finally approached the jetties.

I stopped at a local bait shop to get a fishing report and get some bait.  The lady at Jamison's bait shop was helpful and I learned that the "white" trout, redfish, sea trout, and a few flounder were being caught in several areas on the island and at the Cedar Point pay fishing pier, going onto the island.

For a change there were plenty of parking spaces so I pulled into a spot, broke out my Frog Toggs rain parka, a couple of rods, and a small cooler with my bait.

When I finally made my way out to the end of the farthermost jetty,  I chunked up a large mullet and tossed it out as far as I could away from the rocks and set up the rod.

As I waited for a bite, I took several pics of the action in the area.

There weren't many people out but there were a good number of fishermen situated along several areas of the beach and other jetties.  Most were using a small float with live shrimp trying for the white trout (sand trout) but I was after a redfish.

It didn't take long to get a hit that turned out to be a Sail Catfish of about 28" or so.  It put up a good fight and until I actually saw the fish, I thought I had hooked a small red.

Sail cats are great eating I didn't have a stringer along with me, so I released the fish to fight another day.

About 10 minutes later I hooked into another good fish that also turned out to be a clone of the first sail catfish I landed.

I missed a couple more bites and around 6:00 pm when I was thinking about heading out, I got another bite from a big fish. 

At first I thought it was another sail cat but after it realized it was hooked, it headed to parts unknown like a freight train and broke off the 5/0 Owner hook.

I snell my hooks on my leaders to minimize break offs, so whatever I hooked had to be pretty large to break the 40 pound fluorocarbon leader I had on my 20 pound main line.

Anyway, I was getting cold and wet so I broke down my rod and trudged back over the rocks back to the truck, and headed back to my apartment.

Hopefully, the weather will be better during next week so I can give it another try.