Friday, April 3, 2009

Keewadin 04/01-02/09












We hit the water from Shell Island road around 7:30am on Wednesday, the weather looked iffy and the conditions were not promising as we paddled out into the 15 knot headwind...building later to 20 with gusts to 25 as the afternoon wore on. That didn't stop the snook from chewin' though.

We fished the upper reaches of rookery bay catching a mixed bag throughout the morning and early afternoon. Snook up to 20'', little goliath groupers, whiting, jacks galore, and I managed to jump a nice tarpon in the channel leading to Hurricane pass, he smacked a White and Chanteuse bucktail bouncing on the bottom. We explore this little creek leading a big lagoon in Rookery bay, at high tide there was just barely enough water to make it through so fishing time was limited but we managed to pull a few snook out of the mangroves before the tide started heading out.

Keewadin itself was quite choppy, the wind and surf had churned the water up quite nicely and the snook were plentiful and uninhibited when it came to hitting DOA cals and mirro-dines. My previous experiences on Keewadin consisted of decent snook action in the morning and right before sunset, this was a constant bite from 4pm until sundown, we were sight casting snook surfing in the shore break! Most of the snook in the backcountry were small, less than 20'', on the beach they were a little bigger on average, and they were hungry.

We fished and drank till the sun went down, the when just drank, it was a cool and bug-free night with the breeze running through till the morning. I woke up at dawn and caught another dozen or so little snook on a white bucktail before something of decent size pulled my line-to-line knot out...always humbling, always makes me feel like a damn amateur.

We got going off the beach around 9am and drifted back down Hurricane pass with the wind and tide, we caught a few little snook on the way in but only in Hurricane Pass. the backcountry was deserted it seemed. We packed up and had lunch w/margaritas at the Iron Rhino off of US41 near Goodland.


Glad to see the snook off the beaches again, means more morning fishing for me close to home on Dania Beach, not the craziest snook spot in the world but 5 minutes from my house and productive when the time is right…and the time seems right as I must have nailed around 30 snook on the first day and a little more than a dozen on the paddle back the next day. Most of my fish hit either white bucktails and holographic DOA shrimp.

No comments: