Everything out of whack...

I had the itch to go out and fish last Tuesday. This was the only day in the weeks forecast that would allow a trip, so I took the day off of work and called my buddy Kenny to come along for a South Shore drift. All artificials of course, no live bait; the cast net was left in the truck.

When we arrived at the ramp, my truck was the only one there. Even for a weekday this was very strange, especially with the warm temps (compared to recent weather), and low winds. After the boat and gear was given another once over, we put in and off we went to find some trout, and hopefully a redfish or two.

 While fooling around with one of my reels, Kenny tells me to look over the side of the boat. What I saw surprised the heck out of me. Bait, and lots of it. Whitebait! The water temperature was fifty seven degrees, so of course, as I stated earlier, the net was in the truck, at my request. Oh well, my screw up, it's not like that's never happened before. Kenny and I were still upset though, there was so much bait in one area it was unreal. Decent sized bait too. We watched this bait school twice, unable to do anything about it. That was unheard of for the water temperatures we were in. Oh well.

Next we went to the backcountry to look for redfish, but more importantly, mullet. No mullet were seen, and this has been the norm for the past month. After working the shallow potholes for quite some time, Kenny picked up a couple of trout, and we spooked a few rat reds; that was it.

Our next move was to head out to the deeper, five feet of water we were in earlier. The minor feed was coming up, plus the water was warming up just a little bit. Trout will be chewing, at least that's what I had been telling myself. The bait we saw earlier was long gone, but what had taken it's place was manatees, and lots of them, all in about six to eight feet of water. Why weren't these gentle giants by the power plant outflow? This water was very cold. Very strange, at least for me, this didn't seem normal.

Finally, with the minor starting and pulling what seemed like our hundredth drift, a school of trout was located. They were all small, ten to sixteen inches, but at least the bite was steady. After putting a couple in the cooler for dinner, Kenny shouts out, "this is the one". I'm sitting there like, yeah whatever. Well, it was the one. The one mackerel that would be caught for the day. Kenny pulled a twenty six inch mackerel out of five feet of water. We figured that the mackerel was there because the bait was in the same spot earlier, but no bait was there now? Another strange event.

So we put some fish in the cooler, boated about thirty trout, and probably lost another thirty because they were so small and not very aggressive at all; we were missing hook sets. It was time to head in. After finishing up our beers and final casts, it's off to the ramp. On the way in we see one more unusual sight. Water churning and splashing in the distance near the markers, birds diving, the whole combination. So baitfish were getting hammered in about fifteen to twenty feet of water with birds diving. We figured them to be jacks or probably mackerel, but this was crazy.

Basically, a very, very strange day. Bait on the flats, a fish under a bobber just roaming around, manatees all over the place, a huge mackerel caught on the flats, and a feeding frenzy seen on the way in. I don't know, call me crazy, but this was one eye opening day. It must have been a fluke, but a good story nonetheless.