Canoeing In Ohio: Saltwater Fishing

Most of these were caught on our trip to Alabama this year. We fished in Mobile Bay and on Dauphin Island.

A 30lb redfish. This was the highlight of our trip by far. The day before it had rained a TON and there was a huge amount of water draining out of the intracoastal along a low pier next to our hotel. We got up early and caught some mullet in the casting net over at the boat ramp. I always try to use the casting net at a boat ramp because it guarantees you won't lose the net by getting it snagged on the bottom. We used a baiting needle to thread a long shank hook down the length of a 3" mullet. We put the hook with mullet on a 6" leader and used a two ounce egg weight above the leader. I don't like using so much weight but the current was so strong that we had to. I always put an orange bead between the egg weight and the knot to protect the knot. Adam casted his mullet out just on the edge of where the current was coming out of the intracoastal. Eventually, I heard him shout "I gotta bite and it's big". He says this a lot, but this time I heard his drag sing. I wasn't sure how I had the drag set (dumb), so I grabbed the pole long enough to make sure it couldn't pull him off the pier and into the current. Then I handed it back. It went on two big runs, and he fought it for about 15 minutes until the redfish was exhausted. Once he had it up alongside the pier, I took the pole just to walk it down the length of the pier to land it on the beach (no net). I didn't want to take the chance of him walking it down the pier and brushing the line up against the barnacles on the pilings (a mistake I made when I was 9!).

This shows the pier where we caught the redfish. On the side to the right of Sydney, water was rushing through a channel and out of the intracoastal on the morning we caught the redfish. That's a little croaker that Syd is throwing to the heron.

Gulf Flounder. We had come to this same pier on Dauphin Island the day before and met two older guys catching gulf flounder. They were using the exact same bait as us but we weren't catching any flounder. Eventually, I became curious enough to ask how they were doing it. They were using half ounce weights above a 12" 20lb mono leader (turns out flounder have teeth). They were lip hooking mullet fingerlings and dropping them straight down along each piling on the pier. If they didn't get a bite after a couple minutes they'd move to the next piling. This is the interesting part... when they did get a bite they'd wait 20 seconds before setting the hook. According to the older of the two old guys, flounder need time to get the mullet turned around in their mouths or you'll jerk the bait away without getting them hooked. Obviously he was right because we didn't catch any flounder until we followed his advice the next day. Interesting tidbit... Apparently gulf flounder can change color to match the sea floor.

An atlantic spadefish we caught on fresh shrimp the day before catching the flounder. I don't think we caught anything all week on frozen bait. We did much better using the shrimp and mullet we caught in the casting net at the boat ramps.