By Marco Pompano, Surf Fishing Guide
All those who don’t wanna read another fish story, stop reading right now. Except, this one is true. Here’s a good one that just happened to me, turning a disaster into an epic event.
The weeds have been awful. It’s the Saragosa seaweed. I mean, bad news. With the North winds, Northeast winds, and Southeast winds, the seaweed has pretty much taken over. But the fishing has to go on.
This morning: I never crossed up so many lines, tied them into knots. The lines went around my feet, around the sand spikes, and around each other. It was a mess. Luckily, I had my friend Pat with me to help, and as he witnessed what transpired, he helped me pull in two lines.
It was so tangled. There was catfish on one, and a whiting on the other. I had to get the scissors out and cut them. The third line, which I finally got off my feet, was wrapped around my hand and cut off from the pole. No sooner did I make a few wraps when my arm got pulled out straight by something!
A fish was on, and a big fish. I couldn’t let it take any line, so I just walked into the water a little more with it, and I started walking backwards, wrapping the line around my hand as quick as I could. It was pulling, and I was wrapping, before Pat grabbed the line and we pulled in a 25-inch beautiful, in-the-slot redfish. Caught hand-lining! Ya, mon!
I mean, come on! Who would believe that fish story?!
Let me tell you about the red fish: I always like to give a little info about what it is, even if I’ve written about it many times before. They’re in the drum family, like black drum. They have a bunch of dark spots on them, to distinguish them from other fish. The spots on the tail help them to get away from predators by imitating large ‘dangerous’ eyes. They roam from northern Florida down to the Gulf of Mexico. They were made famous by Paul Prudhomme from New Orleans, who served them blackened (and the rest is history). They are bottom feeders: they eat crab, shrimp, and small fish. They make a croaking, drumming sound which gives them their name. And, they put up a great fight when I hook ’em.
So, with the sound of the islands playing, I was thinking of all our brothers and sisters in Jamaica, who just took a hurricane battering. I put on some reggae music to soothe the soul, and think about them, as me and this red fish are heading to the smoker.
