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Ice Fishing?

No, no ice fishing here, but the water temperature was down to a frigid 66 degrees, compared to the soupy 90 degrees from a couple of months ago.

Pam & I went out for a few hours on a gorgeous Sunday morning yesterday. The guy at the bait shop said the spotted sea trout were back in town, hanging out near piers and docks. We didn't feel like being cooped up near any structures, so we headed to our favorite spot in a secluded channel.

We didn't find any sea trout there, but we did find fish. Pam caught the first fish of the day, a small flounder. And the second fish of the day, another flounder. And the third fish of the day, yet another flounder! What's up with that?

Final score:

Pam: 3 flounder, a bunch of ladyfish
Jim: a ton of ladyfish
Pam & Jim: 1 pompano (cast by Pam, expert landing by Jim)

The pompano came on our very last cast of the day. Down to our last shrimp, Pam made the cast then handed me the rod. She's so sweet. The line gave a couple of gentle tugs, Pam & I conferred, and decided to take our time with it.

Then it hit. Nice and strong. The drag was still loose, so I let it run a bit - it was our last cast after all, and wanted to make the day last just a bit longer.

Without seeing it we could tell it wasn't a ladyfish. It took a run deep and away instead of heading to the surface and putting on a jumping exhibition like the ladyfish do.

It put up a nice fight. And I took all the credit for landing the fish. (Hey, Pam got to take the picture.)  :)

 
The camera phone was hard to work with. Pam got a picture from nearly "above" the fish, so it's hard to see how tall it really was from dorsal fin to pelvic fin. (It was about as tall as its "standard length.")

(Healy, I put a shirt on for you.)