3 Forks & Lagoon

With the water temperatures getting closer to the 90 degree mark, our bite was much slower on 3 Forks. We did manage several bass and a few bluegill, but it was also short lived. By 8:30 we couldn’t find another fish to eat what we were throwing.

My next day we headed to the lagoon to beat some mangroves in search of a snook or two. I have a spot that I found a long time ago that is usually on fire this time of year. It’s a small area that is primarily where the bait will hold in just before daylight. Snook, trout and redfish will ambush the bait as the tide either pulls in or out. This area only works for maybe the first hour as the sun peaks over the ocean and as it gets higher, the bait disappears into deeper waters and it’s over.

We then moved to an area of deeper waters adjacent to a drop off and was hoping to salvage the morning throwing a Yo Zuri suspending jerk bait for a few jacks. It didn’t take long as the medium size jacks showed up. Along with them we managed several nice bluefish and pompanos to keep the tug going.

Learning how to read the waters surrounding your boat and seeing the schools of fish running the area helps to get a bite. We came across one of these schools humping up the water and both of us made our cast into it. We made a couple of twitches of our lure and the water exploded with jacks fighting over our lures to eat. As we both hooked up, it got even crazier as we were very close to the boat by now with our fish to land, pandemonium took place as bull sharks aggressively attacked our fish and our fighting the fish resumed with both our drags screamed off to just about spooling the reels. We managed several times to getting the line back onto our reels to quickly emptying them again. Needless to say, we never got out ours back, but simultaneously turned to each other with huge smiles and high fives, celebrating the action that just took place.

After this I think I’ll be more cautious as to how I will be landing fish into the boat from now on…