Smorgasboard of Fish

Jo and Pat Devlin love to fish and having lived in the area for only a short while, said they only had one spot to fish and needed to see some new areas; it was Pat's birthday and so JO treated him to a day of fishing. With a high, falling tide, we left the dock Saturday morning and ran up to the Jolley River, one of my favorite areas to fish. Not only is it very scenic, there's very little boat traffic and plenty of areas to fish. We fished the eastern shore of the inlet with float rigs to unlimber then went up to a creek mouth where both anglers picked up some croaker then Jo hooked up to hard pulling stingray. Jo had the hot hand early, catching a nice Seatrout and two small Redfish. Pat hooked up to what had to have been a large Bonnethead shark that almost spooled the reel; Pat played him like a pro, but the shark must have found an oyster bed and got cut off. We anchored at the MOA spot, fought and lost another Shark, but otherwise had very few bites, then motored back Jolley and anchored at a small creek where we cast netted for finger mullet. We all noticed something coming out of the water on a mudflat and then realized that about a dozen Blue Crab were ambushing Grass Shrimp, so Pat eased the boat forward and I cast netted a few for bait.

We fished the mouth of Jolley, now with oyster beds showing and Jo caught a slimey but hard fighting Sail Cat. To end the day we ran to Lanceford Creek, fished a dock where Jo cranked in a Black Drum - caught on a piece of the Blue Crab!