Last Updated on March 31, 2014
I set out this morning with the intentions of catching a few Redfish and Trout in the Thousand Islands area of Coca Beach. I arrived at my “secret” spot around sun rise and started throwing an assortment of Gulp Alive lures in hopes of accomplishing my goal. After a few hours of failing to do so, I finally felt some weight on the end of my line!
The weight did not feel like anything I have ever felt before. It was not “running” but it was moving, and doing so in an odd fashion. By its sluggish movements and light weight I thought I may have hooked into a very small flounder. I WAS WRONG:
That’s right folks, its an old dirty sock! Not quite the old tire or licence plate you always see in cartoons, but I did catch a SOCK! (You can see the look the guys in the boat are giving me… its a classic “What The???”
The sock “battle” took my motivation away, and I got lazy, which somewhat paid off. About 30 minutes later I felt a familiar tap on a Gulp Alive Shrimp. I set the hook and the fight was on. Again, the fight seemed odd, but this time it was clearly a fish. I reached for my landing net, the fish was not coming in easy so I didn’t want to lose a large fish, but once I saw the fish I quickly figured out what happened.
It was a 10″ trout that was foul hooked in its belly. As I was reeling the fish in, not only was I fighting the fishes efforts, but it was coming sideways causing a lot of resistance in the water.
After that, I decided to call it a day… One of THOSE days!
Daniel Hagan has been fishing Florida’s shores since 1985 and writing about it for more than 20 years. As Managing Editor of FloridaShoreFishing.com, he shares firsthand experience covering surf and pier fishing, tackle, techniques, and Florida’s coastal species.