Yesterday was a great way to end 2011. My buddy TJ and I started it off by meeting at his house around 4:15am. We then headed off to Shands Pier on the St. John’s River, just outside of Green Cove Springs. I’ll have to admit, it started off pretty slow and didn’t change much through the morning. Around 7:45am, I caught a very nice 15″ striped bass. It hit like a ton of bricks and felt like a much bigger fish. It was quite exciting, especially since I was using the same shrimp tail I had put on the hook almost two hours earlier. After I got it off the hook, I had a bigger hit immediately upon getting a shrimp tail back in the water. However, as I fought to get the fish to the surface, my line gave way. I lost my hook and weight in that battle! TJ wasn’t as lucky. No hits for him on the day, but we had a good time.
We decided to head back out in the evening and figured we would give Knights Marina a try for the evening, since neither one of us had fished there before. The night started of a bit slow. At one point, my son had a nibble, which turned out to be nothing. I had a really good set of hits on my line, but was not able to land whatever I had on it for a few seconds. The best fish of the night is the one you see to the right. TJ landed a 26″ blue catfish! He caught it using chicken liver and was kind of caught off-guard. He was sitting in his chair and caught his pole as it was coming up off of the pier. Then, the fight was on! It was a catch that had my son pretty excited the rest of the night! Below are some of the other pictures we had on the night. Not a bad end to 2011!
