Folly Family FL Trip - Tampa Bay Day 1

[Johnsfolly]

This was a family trip first and a fishing trip second. We took the morning to visit the Dali Museum in St Petersburg. Dali is one of my favorite artists and we enjoyed going thru this very well done exhibit. I am always amazed at the size of his work. Some paintings are basically done on a 3x5 card or canvas and some are 8 x 15 feet.

The plan after the museum was to go to Maximo park and fish for gulf killifish and silver jenny mojarras. Those would be lifers for Sue and Livie and bait for the next stop. There is a small wooden pier near the boat ramps. We were using the tanago set-up and up to #16 hooks with pieces of shrimp. 

sue had the most opportunity for lifers here and she had the task to catch the killifish and silver jenny mojarras. She got it done with the tanago

Her first gulf killifish

A surprise frillfin blenny - Lifer number 2 😉

She moved up to the #16 and caught the most silver jennys for the bait bucket.

While she was catching those mojarras, I was trying for one of the several small goby targets, clown and code goby, in this area. I landed a couple of frillfin gobies and saw a giant.

Livie hooked the giant frillfin on a #18 hook but it dropped off the hook. We caught a bunch of the gulf killifish. I had some small goby rush and pull my tanago into the oysters but never got one hooked up. Did have some fun with little gray snappers😁.

Livie didn't catch a silver jenny before we had to leave to fish the next spot. We left Maximo and headed to a small pier on Pass-a-Grille point south of St Pete beach. When I was here in Nov of 2023, I had a run in with a large stingray that has been haunting me. On this trip I brought one of our larger baitrunning reels and a heavy rod looking for revenge. The water was muddy. I thought that we might be looking at the Missouri river. The last trip the water was clear enough to see the bottom in 12 feet of water. Not this day😒. There were two guys fishing that said that they lost a big ray and had caught several catfish. Neither Sue nor Livie have caught either of the two possible marine catfish, the hardhead and gafftopsail, in this area. I have not caught the gafftopsail either. We learned early to not turn our back on the bait bucket as a great egret helped itself to one of our mojarras (leaving only 4). We made sure the lid was on after that and that we did what we could to dissuade the egrets (now a great egret and a snowy) and the great blue heron from going after our baits.

I put a whole mojarra on a 5.0 circle hook and cast it out with the big rod. We got the other rods set up with bottom rigs. Livie had a high low with circle hooks and pieces of mojarra. Sue had a single hook bottom rig. We still had the #16 hook 4lb line setup as well. Long story, but I never got a solid bite on the whole mojarra baits. The got cleaned likely by crabs. Sue got quite a few pinfish and a nice silver perch on her shrimp baits.

Livie caught the first catfish, her lifer gafftopsail cat (got me a bit jelly 🤔).

Sue followed up and landed a lifer hardhead catfish on the shrimp.

Livie switched to the small fish rig and gave me a mercy time on her high low rig rod (I still didn't catch anything with that rod either).

Livie was bouncing a piece of shrimp around the pier pilings and caught a couple of hard fighting Atlantic Spadefish (Lifer) , pigfish, and white grunts.

The guys before us ended up leaving and a couple more showed up. One was cast netting and he caught a couple of sheephead with the cast net. Maybe that was a sign of things to come. I took over the small rig and actually started to catch fish. I also caught a couple of spadefish.

Livie didn't like that I let the fish dig and run before landing them. She was telling me to REEL.. REEL... The next fish fought much harder and differently and I did REEL.. and landed a nice sheepshead.

It was getting dark, our parking time was done and without any more live bait decided to leave. Maybe I could have caught that ray after dark, but we had 90 min drive back to the hotel and Sue was already waiting in the car. Live another day!

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

Great times, excellent photos.   Sorry about the Ray.    Them gaftopsail catfish are so cool.  The iridescent color seems like it would be a bad choice for survival.