C-8 Canal Fishing Series

This post is on the series of fishing trips on the C-8 Biscayne Canal, I have been fishing very much recently. These trips are ones that I have caught fish on. In these different attempts to catch fish, I try new techniques based on my previous experiences, as you learn something every fishing trip regardless of it’s result.

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June 19, 2018

For the first trip of the series that resulted in fish, I went fishing on the C-8 Canal again, using bread, to try to catch whatever would bite. From my experiences before, I knew to bring some bullet sinkers with me to tie on in order to keep the ducks and the minnows near the surface of the water from stealing all of our bait. The trip started out well, as I had caught a bluegill! I then threw it out in the middle of the canal to use it as live bait for bigger fish. Unfortunately, it did not work. I went back to fishing with the bread under the dock, and I had caught two Mayan Cichlids! After all, it had been a good day that raised my hopes about the canal. It was good to see that the water clarity and the bite was better after it had rained all week, which made the water more murky. I would have caught more fish, but the bread was very soft and kept on coming off the hook, especially when fish were nibbling it. I also saw some Peacock Bass, which I might try to catch soon. Tight Lines and Stay Tuned!

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June 26, 2018

Today, I decided to try to use a mini rod to catch some fish. I was using hot dogs this time because the bread that I had used before was too light and fluffy. It got off the hook much easier, and to even have the bread stick on the hook for a little bit, you would need to squeeze it and make it wet before baiting the hook. The hot dog was much better because it stayed on the hook until a fish bit it. Fishing was slower today rather than the other day that I had caught fish, and I knew that if I had brought hot dogs that first day, I would have caught much more fish. The water was much clearer today than the last few days because it hadn’t rained yesterday. This let me see the fish better so that I could drop the bait in their direction, and see when to reel in the slack when a fish would take it. The clarity of the water may have been a reason that I did not catch any fish in the past few days, although if I had more time to fish, I may have caught something. Sometimes, a school of fish would suddenly appear and check out my bait, but be gone as fast as they came. Other times, there were no fish to be seen. Overall, after about 35 minutes of fishing, I caught 2 small bluegills. They were fun to catch on the mini rod. The hot dogs were definitely better and stayed on the hook better. Another successful day of fishing that assured that hot dogs are a good bait and that mini rods are pretty fun to use. It also taught me some patterns of the fish in the C-8 Canal.

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July 2, 2018

On this trip, I went back to the canal to catch some fish with hot dogs. I caught one fish, a Bluegill, but I saw much more, and bigger fishes (fishes can be used properly when you are talking about multiple species of fish) check out and even bite my hot dogs. Something that surprised me on this fishing session was seeing some huge Peacock Bass by the bank. As expected, they didn’t bite my hot dog, although I did try, unsuccessfully to hit it in order to irritate them and have them bite my bait, a method I used before during the mating season. It is the very end of the mating season, if not over already, and these Peacocks were definitely not protecting a nest. I didn’t take any pictures because I didn’t bring my phone, but I wouldn’t have been able to take a pic of my Bream anyways because it had fallen off the hook as soon as I had brought it up. Today was another short but interesting session at the C-8 canal.

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Awesome Day on Sea Legs

Today I had a fishing day to remember. My aunt, Annette, and I went on our long overdue annual fishing trip on the Sea Legs party boat in Hollywood, Fl. For the first time, we arrived on time to boat. It was a slightly breezy day, and there were some clouds in the sky that would come and go. As we went out, we knew that the trip would not be a rocky one, because we weren't expecting any waves. What surprised us, though, was that the water was almost completely flat. It was looking like a great trip already, and Annette and I had great feelings about the fishing yet to come. We arrived at our spot after about 15-20 minutes after leaving the dock. We started to catch fish as soon as we dropped our baits. Annette and I felt nibbles, slightly jerked up the rod, and reeled up some fighting fish. They were Vermillion Snappers! We kept on fishing at this spot for a while until the school left. The whole boat was catching fish, but we had, by far, the most amount of fish caught at the time, with 10 combined. We already had a few double hookups on one line because the chicken rigs we were using had two hooks baited with squid that were dropped to the bottom. We went to another spot that was not far away, and started catching just as we had before. This time not only were we catching more big Vermillion Snappers, but we also caught some Yellow-Eyed Snappers. They were fighting very well when I brought them up. We continued at this spot until we had a total of 18 fish. We were already satisfied with our trip, and we still had about an hour and a half left to go before we went in! At our last few stops, we had caught some more snappers. The whole boat was catching fish. Our biggest fish of the day was a big Red Grouper that we had brought all the way to the surface, only to fall off just before we could bring it into the book. It's a shame that we couldn't have taken any pictures with it, but at least we had caught it! As the day wore on, the sky cleared up and the people kept on catching. We ended up the trip with a combined 23 fish caught, I caught 15 fish, Annette got 5 fish, and 3 fish were caught by both of us. This was an awesome day of fishing, and we will definitely continue to fish on this boat. Tight Lines, and Stay Tuned!