Marina Jet-Dock Fishing

I attended a wedding reception yesterday - a few guys were fishing at the O'Club Beach within view of where I was sitting. They were pulling in some good sized bonefish on a regular basis. It made it really hard to sit still. I eventually was able to "tastefully" bow out and Mike, Sonny (new guy) and I made a break for the Marina Dock.

We were initially throwing topwater pencil minnow lures. We got hits from small barracuda. Mike landed two of them, the one in the first picture is the larger of the two. My hit resulted in a cut leader. Nice, quick and intense fights!!!

I took a close look at the teeth and now will use a homemade dehooking device to reduce risk to fingers (and hopefully improve mortality rate - especially of the snapper that sometimes get gut hooked).

For today (Sunday) -

We went back this morning and fished for four hours.

Mike got a small trevally early on.

I brought the fly rod and my light spinning pole.

I hooked up with two larger tangs (Yellowfin Surgeon or Pencilled Surgeon - I didn't pull them up so I couldn't tell) that ended up winning the tug of war game (and are now carrying around some Bonefish Biter flies).

I then started using the spinning pole with squid and got three nice sized pompano.

A big school of mullet moved in (despite there being two rather large Blue Trevally patrolling the area) so I tied up an "algae" fly. The mullet were not showing any love for the fly so I started targeting the manini (convict tangs) that were grazing off the pier. I site casted and nailed one! At least I took one on the fly today - didn't mentally make up for the loss of the two flies, but it was a legitimate fly land.

I ended the session with two hits off the spinning gear - the first was most likely a bonefish and it spit the hook after a good fight. The second was definitely hooked - it was pulling line off the reel and was making me walk up the dock. It was eventually able to undo the leader knot. After cussing up a storm, I conceded a 'tie' to the finned warriors.

I'll try to get another session in later today - it's raining solidly