Thread: Run off

I had a day off on Friday and decided that I needed some time in the salt. Got to Mosquito Lagoon and put in real close to 6. With the wind out of the west and possible weather about 11 I didn’t go far. Turned out to be a good thing. Mullet and other bait by the thousands were all over, and all moving north. I started off with a good sized topwater but only got smacked around a few times with no takers. So I downsized a bit and got a bit more interest and finally got a sixteen inch trout about three twitches into a long cast. Gave a good fight of it and he went back in the pool. I had started up against the mangroves but thought I might find more toward deeper water. Turned out I was right. All of the activity I found was between the spoil islands. I guess I was moving too fast and saw a school of reds or black drum move off to the southwest. Wish I’d seen em earlier. I have a small topwater bait that I’ve been waiting to try so I picked up the rod, lighter than the others, and got after it. Made just a few casts and started interrupting the retrieve. Stop for. Three count, twitch it twice, stop for a count of four, twitch it once, short pause, twitch 6 times, pause and twitched it twice and it got crushed 20’ from the boat. Good fish, lots of drag and I was in open water so I let him play. Into the net finally came a stout 20” trout with a mouth full of both trebles. Now he took a little bit to get loose but I finally got him free and set him close to the yardstick while still in the net. Then set him back in the water and let him chill a minute. Didn’t take much and he was ready to go. At this point I’m a happy boy. While not big enough for gator status he was plenty big enough for me. Now I looked back to the north where some clouds had been getting busy more and more, and here is a wall cloud from far left all the way to out of sight to the right. It wasn’t pretty and looking pretty black underneath. Kinda where my ramp was. Bad enough I was distracted. I tried to pick off one more fish but I couldn’t concentrate, knowing what might come. So before lightning started dropping out the bottom of the cloud I wrapped up and headed out. It seems this cloud was moving pretty quick and was in fact over the ramp and the wind had tripled. Lady Luck smiled on me for a moment brief enough to get the boat on the trailer before unzipping the clouds before I got out of the parking lot. Perfect timing, still dry and no lightning. Ate my sandwich and headed home, it just turned over 8 o’clock. Drove 50 miles, got up at 4 to be there at sunrise to catch two fish and get run off. Goes that way sometimes. I look back at it as a good salty trip for the first time in almost two years. The cloud was the most impressive thing I’ve seen in a while. The first pic is from where I was looking west and the second is a panoramic shot from east to west. Hope y’all get out soon, and I hope I’m there already. …..Skeet

The cloud was a straight line from west to east and the panorama shot made it look curved. Ominous to say the least.