2 out of 3 fishing, kayaking, Mississippi

[rattlesnake68]

Well I have 2 out of 3 covered here. The Mississippi coast line has had a lot of freshwater dumped into it lately. I took my nieces' husband out for his first saltwater kayak trip last week southeast of Biloxi, MS and two miles south of Horn Island. He had never even seen saltwater. Not an ocean or the Gulf. He is used to catching crappie and bass on the times that he has gone fishing in Oklahoma. Needless to say, he was in for a surprise when we got into saltwater and past all the brackish waters. OHH the look on his face when the first rod/reel, a Penn Battle ll 4,000, bent over double and drag started screaming off of the reel. It was more like a serious look of concern and "what the heck do we do with that?" First fish in the kayak was a smallish shark which quickly went back into the water after a quick photo. A few more hookups that got off due to inexperience and then a bonito (little tunny ) hit and hit hard. Fat little football nearly stripped the line off of the reel. That one went into my CE Smith fish bag for a little experimentation back at the VRBO beach house. A few more missed fish and then a good sized shark slid in behind our spread while we were trolling at 4.5 mph. After a twenty-five minute fight Tuff had the shark up against the kayak. Of course the shark had to strike on my 4,000 series reel and not the Penn 6,500 so it took a little while. Tuff learned another valuable lesson at that point. That five foot + shark isn't a crappie and you can't lift it out of the water with the rod. I had the drag set where he couldn't break it, but the line was seriously taunt and one slash of the shark tail made quick work of the mono line. He was very bummed out, but I assured him I'd take him on another trip. I'm pretty sure he is hooked on this saltwater thing.

[Cuervo Jones]

Yep. Got my attention with this one. Good stuff man!


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[jnd1959]

Nice post thanks for sharing. I'm curious what the experimentation will be. Were not sewing together a frankenfish are we?

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[rattlesnake68]

Nothing crazy going on. First, I wanted to give that CE Smith fish bag another test since we were out there most of the day. My daughter, Alexis, and I plan on seeing a lot of you at the BWKC and I wanted to make sure our catch was going to stay fresh. Second, I've always heard that little tunny aren't any good to eat and are just shark bait. Well, I also gleaned from Google that what I'm calling a Bonito is actually a False Albacore and the False Albacore is trash fish. I guess the Atlantic Bonito have straight lines and the False Albacore have squiggly lines across the back. Anyway, I may not have a refined palate considering I fix squirrel tacos, but I can tell you that the fish Tuff caught, False Albacore, was fine as sashimi and really tasty lightly seasoned and quickly seared on both sides with the center being raw. So the next Atlantic Bonito or False Albacore that boards my kayak is not likely to leave it.

[jnd1959]

Cool. I will have to try that. I like my squirrel fried but I'm willing to try the tacos!

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[rattlesnake68]

Jnd, I started out frying them, but they were grown squirrels so the meat was a little tough. I had an epiphany and decided to drop them into a crockpot. After a couple of hours I deboned them and chopped everything real fine like. After that I just toasted some taco shells and pulled out all the toppings and it was some good eating. Tip... don't cook the squirrels too long in the crockpot. Otherwise you get to find out just how many tiny bones, the size of buck shot, are in a squirrel. I learned that mistake trying to make squirrel jerky. Next time I'm going to crockpot them and then fry them up. When you have a pecan grove on the property, you're never in short supply of squirrels. Have a great day.