Turtle Bay Trip Report
By Michael Emshoff
The day started out calm except with a few enthusiastic fishermen who where all trying to get into the water to start fishing in Turtle Bay. Once in Turtle Bay the water was boiling with bait, off color, and partly cloudy skies with kayakers already working hard to get their first red. Unfortunately only one keeper red was caught by Terri on a soft paddle tail bait on the shore line. Joe also caught fish but it was a hodgepodge of undersized fish on dead shrimp. As I paddled to back of the Bay to see if I could find tailing reds, I saw a huge black drum, about 40 inches in length, tailing along the shore line. As I was deciding what to do if I caught this monster, I made a perfect cast and made the best presentation in my life but with no prevail. The drum just simply swam past me and ignored the top water all three casts. What I did not know was this was going to foreshadow the trip in Turtle Bay for us. Because it was only a few minutes later I saw my first redfish tail at a point in front of some grass. As I worked my top water past the redfish it was as if the fish did not see it. I ended up making three to four casts towards the redfish before it decided it was harassed enough and disappeared behind me. I saw a few more redfish which gave me the same result as the first one and the other PACK members were also having the same luck as me. Barry also was sight casting reds with his fly rod but these reds were not interested with what we were using.
At about 10:00 the red fish disappeared altogether and the bait calmed down. I also noticed my kayak was moving slowly and felt unbalanced. I opened the hatch and found about two to three gallons of water inside my kayak. Luckily for me I brought a bilge pump and was able to pump the water out. It was a small crack which was about an inch long, leaking about a gallon an hour in my kayak. Bilge pumps should be included with your kayak gear as you never know when or where a leak will happen.
As I paddled around I noticed more and more people were deciding to fish somewhere else or it was time to pack up and leave. Then the tide started to pull the water out of Turtle Bay and the wind started to blow from the west. I figured I would try the shore line once more. After a few minutes, I noticed the fish were somewhere else and a small storm was starting in the west. I decided it was best to go ahead and call it a day. |