I spent the day fishing on Daytona Beach’s Main Street Pier. This is a location that I fish from quite often, some would call me a regular. Well, today I brought along 2 poles with me. One to fish the bottom with live shrimp and one to float some live shrimp under a cork.
I spent about 10 minutes getting the rigs set up. I first cast the bottom rig out and let it soak. Then I dropped the cork in the water to only have it blasted quickly by a Blue Fish. On my second cast with the cork another blue nailed it. This Blue Fish was about 18 inches, not bad for a Daytona Beach Blue Fish. This pattern continued on for about two hours. Constantly pulling in Blue Fish after Blue Fish. While I am not a fan of Blue Fish meat, I do very much enjoy catching them because they are great fighters, so for me, this is a good time.
Meanwhile, the pole that was set to soak on the bottom has done nothing more than soak. I reeled it in to check my bait, it was still there but the shrimp was dead. I re-baited and cast it out again. This time I was hoping for a little more action on that pole! The floating rig started to slow down when I had a very hard and very fast hit. I only saw a glimpse of the fish and I thought it was a ladyfish; it was long, slender and fast. I put a new shrimp on, as soon as it hit the water, the same type hit. I fought the fish briefly and pulled in a nice keeper Spanish mackerel.
The very next cast I ended up fighting what I thought was a large fish, but it turned out to be a 15-inch pompano! SCORE! I love pompano meat, and love the fight they put up! I wanted to get my line back in the water as soon as I could in hopes of snagging another one! And I did just that! As soon as the new shrimp splashed a fish nailed it and the fight was on! This fish fought a little harder than the previous one and really had me going! After about 3-4 minutes I got my first look at the fish and it was a nice pompano. About a 17 inch fish!
Well, things started to slow down for a while and I finally caught a fish on the bottom rig. A 23-inch bonnet head shark. Nothing to brag about at all, but at least that rig brought in something! As I was releasing the shark, my float disappeared! I grabbed the pole and a fast fish took off running! It was another Spanish Mackerel. By now it is about noon, I have 4 keepers in my cooler and it is getting a bit hot so I decided to call it a day!
Total Tally:
10 Blue Fish
2 Keeper Pompano
2 Keeper Mackerel
