Knute, the heathen, and I departed Louisville at 0930 hours on Thursday March 10th and drove all day to Panama City. We fished some conservation ponds outside of Panama City on Friday and Saturday. These ponds are strictly regulated. They provide a rowboat (no electric motors or gas motors) and the possession limit is 10 crappie each with a minimum 10 inch length. Bluegill possession is 25 fish.They require the fisherman to record in a log book each fish caught and it's length, even the short fish. All bass must be released. We caught very few short fish and most of the crappie were 12 inches and a lot were 14 inches. Our group of 5 fishermen in three boats caught our limit of crappie and had a few bluegills thrown in also. Our fifty crappie had a weight of 40 pounds.
We switched tactics on Sunday and went salt water fishing for Spanish Mackerel in a bay at Panama City. We rented a pontoon from a State Dock and caught a slew of those toothy critters. Minimum length on the mackerel is 12 inches. We utilized a variation of a sabiki rig that has 4 hooks and a weighted trailing plug. Some of the mackerel were 14 inches with the biggest being 20 inches.
Lots of dolphins (the mammal) were in the bay. I hooked up with a mackerel and was reeling it in when Flipper took it for a lunch snack. I've never had anything at the end of my line that weighed 1,000 pounds!! I grabbed my reel to prevent it from stripping all my line and and was expecting to recover the head of the Mackerel but Flipper pulled it off my rig. Thank goodness I never actually hooked Flipper.
Just shortly after we left the dock,we were safety checked by the Coast Guard. Nice fellows, but they discovered that our fire extinguisher was inoperative and also that we had no throw cushion. A fix it citation was written on the State Dock rental and on our return to the dock to obtain a fire extinguisher and cushion we were met in the bay by the dock rental operator and received the necessary equipment.
Monday the 14th, we travel to Lake Talquin near Quincy,Fl. The crappie were slow to bite, but the ones we did catch were nice ,healthy,fat crappie.
We also saw our fair share of alligators on Lake Talquin. We came around a bend up in a river and saw this huge 14-15 footer sunning on the bank. That's something this boy isn't used to spotting on a bank. Dang, that thing was huge.
Knute and I left for home on Thursday the 17th. We were traveling West bound on I-10 at the posted speed limit when a car passed us going at least 95 mph. Shortly after he (she?) passed us,he lost it.He did several 360's in the West bound lane, went into the median backward and sideways,crossed over the East bound lanes,over the ditch on the other side and up a hill. It never flipped or rolled over and thankfully for him, there was no East bound traffic at that time and stretch of road. I'm sure a change of underwear was required on his part.:eek:
We had some great weather the entire trip. It was a pleasure to finally get some sun and dry out.
Next trip: Dale Hollow. It's great being retired.:p
