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Fishing Report Archives

 

August 12, 2011

Steve and I went back out on Friday intending to go out to the rigs looking for some kings or perhaps finding a shrimper loaded with fish. That did not work out very well. Despite the weather forecast for the 12th being seas one foot or less and isolated thunderstorms we hit rough going before we even got to Horn Island. It was a little better for a while once we got south of the island but even though there were some birds diving and some spanish mackerel were breaking the surface, we only got one hit and it pulled off.

We trolled all the way to Ship looking for reds with no luck. The charter guys were having a tough time too according to their radio conversations.

We tried going out to FH-3 but by the time we got there thunder caught our attention and was steadily getting louder. We pulled anchor and headed back in to the island to try for some ground mullet and white trout. Once again thunder greeted us before we could even  get our lines ready. A big storm was moving off shore into the gulf. It was time to head in as quickly as possible. We managed to dodge the storm and get to the Biloxi-Ocean Springs bride to ride out the bad weather. Fishing under the bridge put a few fish in the cooler then when the rain stopped we went to my honey-hole in the bay and caught a few more mostly smallish white trout but at least something to stink up the grease.

This was not one of the better fishing trips I have been on but it was far better than having to be at work or home mowing the grass.

July 26, 2011

We made another Horn Island trip Friday afternoon through Saturday, July 29 and 30.

We left the dock about 6:30 p.m. and could not get fresh bait as the bait house at Ocean Springs was closed for the evening. We then headed to Horn Island. There was not much showing on the outside of the island and the swells were about 4 feet so we moved on around the north side for calm water and anchored up to spend the night.

The crew was my son-in-law, Steven White, on his first saltwater fishing adventure, and my grandson, Daniel Ridge, age 16 but a veteran fishing partner. I wanted to show Steve some of the variety saltwater fishing offers so we bottom fished using some frozen shrimp I brought from home just in case. Lucky I did! We caught lots of ground mullet with a mixture of lady fish, gafftops, white trout, and those pesky hardheads thrown in.

A shark line responded quickly but we did not catch any sharks I wanted to keep. Most were small, around four feet in length. We also enjoyed looking up at the clear starry sky and saw lots of shooting stars streaking across.

As daylight broke Steve hooked into a stingray that it took him about 10 minutes to land. Fighting the ray got Steve hooked too. I think there is a new saltwater fisherman in the family! To sink the hook in even deeper I took Daniel and Steve back south of the island to find some bull reds. It did not take long to locate the schools and we beat the charter boats to them and quickly caught our limit of fish over 30 inches.

All three of us were dead tired and had boat cleaning chores ahead of us so we headed for the dock around 10:00 a.m. We were out of room in the fish box anyway. Beautiful weather and calm seas made for a quick trip back to the dock.

 

July 26, 2011

Finally a new report! I got my boat back from the shop after a long delay in finding a part for the Mercury Verado. My friend Johnny and I left in late morning from Ocean Springs and headed out to Horn Island. We found birds just south of the island and hit schools of big redfish.  We had a blast catching these but one of them got away with my antique blue mullet spoon. It was well worn from years of use and tackle box abuse but still got a strike today but broke off as I was trying to net the fish.

As we had our limit of big reds and the skies were threatening we moved to the north side of the island at a favorite spot for white trout and ground mullet. Before we could get the small lines rigged up an approaching thunderstorm had us heading back to the bay for cover. We then moved to another “honey hole” in the bay where we started catching white trout. We could have filled the box but once again a strong storm helped us decide to head back to the dock while it was still safe to make the run.

All in all a very nice and welcome day on the water... AT LAST!!

 

June 21, 2010

My grandson Daniel and I went out to Horn Island for an overnight trip. We could not go to my usual fishing grounds due to the BP oil spill. We did catch a lot (40-50)of small blacktip sharks which we returned to the water. The marine radio warned us of an approaching storm around 2:30 am so we headed back to Biloxi Bay. We were stopped about half way in by the Feds who inspected us and spent quite a while taking info from my driver’s license. I don’t know what that was about but we eventually made it to the bay where we caught a good mess of white trout just after sunup.

June 28, 2010

Finally got to get back on the water on Tuesday, June 8th. The weather was great and our main concern was the BP oil spill. We went to Horn Island and saw lots of boom deployed and ready to employ but thankfully no oil.

We trolled a good while with very little luck so we moved to the north side of horn and fished for ground mullet. We easily filled the box with fish and headed back in. Nothing to brag about but considering we could not go to my primary fishing areas due to the spill I guess we did okay.

August 26, 2009

Natalie and I went out beyond Horn Island looking for the shrimp boats that had offered such great fishing during my last 5 or 6 trips. However, there were no shrimp boats to be found south of the island so we headed to FH-3 to see what we could find. Fishing there was slow but we did get a up-close-and-personal view of NOAA’s new survey ship. See fishing photos link for a good picture of this ship.

We decided to troll back toward the island. We started picking up a few fish on the way in including spanish and bonito. As we got within about two miles of the island, bait schools started showing up on the surface. We were catching nice spanish mixed in these schools. Very soon the water as far as you could see turned to schools of fish on the surface with large splashes as larger fish fed on them. Trolling was fast and furious as we could not get all our lines in for  all the strikes we were getting. We ended up with a box full of spanish mackerel, some king mackerel, a big bull red, and some bonito to use for cut bait. On the way in we stopped on the north side of the island at about the ten foot level along the drop-off and caught a mess of ground mullet and had a ball playing with high-jumping ladyfish. Once we got to shore it took a hour just to clean the boat from all the fish!

The fishing was a blast and it was good to see the big schools back. This is the first trip this year where the spanish and other schools have shown up everywhere you looked. Wow! The most difficult part of the trip was getting that big heavy ice chest full of fish off the boat.

 

July 3, 2009

On Friday, July 10th a ham radio friend, Johnny and I headed out to do some fishing. We wanted to get back into some of the big fish action I had enjoyed for the three weeks prior. When Johnny told me he would like to target something to pull on rather than just fishing for meat I told him if we did that he would be tired out by 10:00 am and ready to head back in.

Well I was wrong on that call. We were both exhausted by 9:30! Once again we found all the big fish we wanted to catch under shrimp boats out well past Horn Island. After hooking our first big jack and getting pulled half a mile or more, we landed him then a shark that we left splashing in the water. This brought 5 lemon fish (cobia) right up to the boat. They were very slow to cooperate and would barely pay any attention to the white trout and croaked we offered them. We did manage to catch two of them using squid with the hook carefully hidden inside. One thing I have noticed lately is that the big jacks attack the sharks as we are trying to land them.

You may be able to see the tooth marks on the side of this small black tip. Some of them were bitten much worse but I happened to think to get a picture of this one.

We ended up going in early as expected. With the heat and the exertion of catching so many big jacks, sharks and cobia neither of us wanted to put over another line and have to fight another fish. In fact I have not been back out now for a couple of weeks. I am about ready to hit ‘em again but may target smaller fish next time, some I can give away to friends and neighbors to eat. Right now we are finally in a spell where we are getting a little much needed rain. As soon as the weathers clears up or at least the storms abate I plan to be back on the water.

 

July 3, 2009

On Friday, July 3rd Mark Kellum and I headed out to fish in the 61st Annual Mississippi Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo. I have fished in way over half of these rodeos and hate to miss even a day of fishing. HOWEVER... Although we started out with the possibility of getting in two or three days fishing, things did not go quite as planned. The fishing was actually too good!

I guess I have to admit another factor is we are all getting a bit older and can’t stand the exertion quite as well as in years past.

We left Ocean Springs prior to 7 am and headed out toward the Getty Rigs. Once we got on the water the day was a bit too hazy for me to be comfortable going out that far. The day before had seen strong thunderstorms move off shore into the gulf and that was a possibility on Friday as well. The reduced visibility could have let us get caught in a bad situation so I elected to stay closer to Horn Island.

We went out well beyond FH-3 where we saw three groups of shrimpers cleaning up after a night’s work. We were able to get a good bucket of chum from one of the boats and then the fun was on. We could catch fish as fast as we could get lines in the water. There were jacks, sharks, bonito, and lemon fish on all of the boats.

Most of the jacks were big enough to compete for a prize at the rodeo so we kept a big one on board and threw the rest back. The sharks were mostly black tips and were running a little smaller than usual. The majority were around 40 inches and we threw all but one back. We kept one to give to someone who requested one to eat. There were plenty of large bull sharks in with them. One interesting thing I noticed was that the big jacks were coming in and biting the sharks we had hooked. Some had big tooth marks on the side and others even had plugs bitten out. I had never seen this before in many years of fishing out there.

The weather was very hot and pulling on all those big fish was sapping our energy very quickly so around noon we headed back to the island for some smaller fish. We found out we were really too tired to even move the boat around to find white trout so we decided to call it a day and head back in early afternoon. We threw the jack we were going to enter in the rodeo back in as we were both to tired to mess with going by and entering!

As we got closer to shore we could actually feel the temperature rising. It was close to if not over 100 degrees at the dock.

Cleaning up the boat was a real chore after catching all those fish and having to work in the heat but we got in done in an hour or so.

I am writing this on Sunday morning and I still feel the effects of pulling on those fish. I guess I need to scale down a bit on target fish if I want to try and do overnight trips. I still do want to go to the Gettys for some kings though. We will just have to see what the weather allows us to do.

Tight lines and smooth seas.

June 5 & 6, 2009

Another of those great fishing trips!!

Ed, a good friend of mine from USM and I went out Friday afternoon to Horn Island to try to catch some fish around anchored shrimp boats. We were too late getting out as the boats were out past FH3 on the south side of Horn Island. They were all just ready to start trawling for the night so we went back and got a good mess of spanish mackerel by trolling along the bars at the west end of Horn.

A strong north wind was blowing so we anchored on the south side about a mile from the west end for the night. Fishing was slow but at least the bugs were not nearly as bad as they had been last week. We turned in early to get rest so we could be ready when the shrimpers anchored in the morning to clean their nets.

We headed south shortly after daybreak and I managed to hook up with a nice cobia at the first anchored boat we found. He took the bait three times and I failed to keep him on the line either of them.

We then went to fish a rig near by and there was not even any hard tails there for live bait.

We then moved to another shrimp boat and that is when the “reel” fun began!

This boat had loads of big jacks and bonita behind it and the water seemed to be boiling with fish. We both immediately hooked up and for the next couple of hours wore ourselves out catching these bruisers. At one point Ed was hanging on to something obviously quite large and I was hooked onto a bonito when I saw a couple of huge sharks come up and one of them bit my bonito in half from the rear. He then grabbed the front half before I could pull it away and got hooked on the large jig I was using to catch the bonito. I knew I had a very large shark, at least 8 feet, maybe a good bit more on the line and then I found out that Ed also had a similar shark on his line as well. We untied from the shrimp boat and let the sharks and the tide carry us away so the lines would not get tangled on the shrimp boat and so we could try and recover some of the line the sharks were stripping from our reels. We managed to keep both sharks on for an hour and had both sharks within twenty feet of the boat and had seen them quite well when my hook pulled out. Ed was ready to cut the line on his so I took the rod but when the shark lunged toward the motor I was too tired to move fast enough to keep the line from hitting the lower unit and breaking.

Losing those two sharks may have actually been the luckiest part of the day as they were certainly too big for us to boat and a shark that big can surely hurt you and tear things up.

We went back to another shrimper also full of fish but after another jack each we were both too tired to put a line in the water. We headed back in just before noon totally used up. We had both decided on the way down that we wanted to catch big fish and were not concerned about putting meat in the box. This trip was a great success and we did get that good mess of mackerel for eating as well.

May 30 & 31, 2009

At last!! Good weather and a chance to do some off-shore fishing. Mark and I left Ocean Springs harbor early Saturday morning and headed to Horn Island. We trolled a bit as we headed out toward FH-6 and the rigs beyond. The spanish mackerel were finally hitting a trolled spoon and they were mostly nice-size fish at that. We did not get a good anchor set at FH-6 and the site of oil rigs and shrimp boats on the horizon prompted us to head further out since snapper season was not open anyway.

The shrimp boats yielded many good hard fighting fish including bonito, big tackle busting jacks, black-tip sharks and more. We did not get any cobia but there were some caught there by other boats.

We headed back 28 miles to Horn in time to get there before dark. I decided to anchor on the drop-off about half a mile east of the west tip on the north side of the island. The depth drops quickly from around 3 feet to well over twenty feet. By anchoring on the slope we could fish for ground mullet and white trout on the shallow side and for redfish and sharks on the deeper side. This worked out just fine as we had action from the time we stopped the boat. We caught all the small fish we wanted to eat and kept some undersize ones for bait next trip out.

As it got later we managed to pick up a couple of nice redfish using cut-bait on the bottom with a fish-finder rig. The fish continued to bite well all night as we fished between cat naps on a beautiful night with very little chop on the water but lots of big mosquitos and biting flies harassing us from the island.

The Sunday morning weather was even better than Saturday and we again moved outside the island to try and find more of those good spanish mackerel. They were still hitting our squid spoons and we caught a good many with best results trolling over the sandbar just past the second gut out from the south side of the island starting about a half mile east of the tip and running a mile or so down the bar. If you try this be sure to keep a close eye on your depth gauge as there are places where the water gets quite shallow in that area.

We ended up with both our big ice chests so full of fish that we had to cut off heads and tails to fit them in.