Prefered Path to Port A North Jetty?

[Fox²]

I'm getting back into kayak fishing after being out a while. Got a new, to me, kayak. Made a new account here, seems a little slower now than it use to be.

I want to make it to the lee side of North Jetty. Not my first time out there in a kayak, but the first time in the better part of 10(?!) years. Last time I seem to remember a certain member here being pulling toward a tanker by a kingfish as it sounded it's warning horn...

I've studied the maps, and come up with three routes.

First route, the longest, I feel is the safest. I feel like the channel crossings here are a little less terrifying. However, I wouldn't want to leave my kayak in the little break water that's there. Navigating the rocks to get kayak on top of jetties for an overland portion looks... difficult.

Second route. Nice secure area to keep car and launch kayak. Crossing the channel so close to the turn at a three way intersection.... I've talked myself out of it writing this. I could stick to the south jetty until out, however, that's another issue. The idea of kayaking all the way out of the jetties concerns me.

Has anyone done it before? Do I have room to both avoid those fishing onshore and boat traffic?

Last route, surf launching the kayak. This is what I'm most familiar with, I'm very familiar with it's draw backs as well. I've been there launching with the water almost glass only to get rolled by high surf a few hours later coming in.

[Fox²]

Alright.

I made this trip Sunday afternoon. Honestly, risk vs reward, not something I'd do on a regular basis.


Perfect conditions don't always line up with free time. I made an educated guess the weather reports of storms to be wrong, as the often are on Sunday. Sky was overcast and the wind was manageable.

I launched from the Port A boat ramp, boat traffic was all but absent, so I cut across. I checked out the inland start of the North Jetty. Rather lazily threw a spoon out as I made my way out. I was 'rewarded' with ladyfish and a dolphin escort... (I had a dolphin almost knock me out of a kayak chasing a ladyfish once not far from here.)

I made my way around to the opposite side to check conditions. Massive numbers of menhaden lined this side of the rocks, the birds were working them, but not much from below. I made it far enough to check the surf, immediately turned around. I went all the way back in and came up the land route I'd scouted before.

I set up for the night on the jetty right past the first set of breakers. I had the whole place to myself. The topic of the night was catfish. Catfish by the millions. An inexhaustible number of gaftop. Some previous visitors were nice enough to leave behind some mullet, so I took advantage.

Around 22:00 I switched to a larger hook, still throwing a small chunk of cut mullet. I found the bull reds. One definitely a PB and the other a hard fighter. I lost both trying to get them up the rocks without killing myself. Talk about a huge punch in the gut. During the same time something kept cutting my line above the leader. All I would feel was a small tug and it'd be over. Shark? I kept some large whiting as a consolation prize.

Sometime before midnight the sky cleared up, stars came out, and the bite died for everything except our extremely fat catfish. Not long after that my very expensive, 15h+ plus claimed headlamp died after 5 hours on low. I pack up and settled in to wait for morning.

A few hours later I launched back out through the surf. The wind was calm. The water from the shore didn't look bad at all, smooth launch until I realized the waves were exhausting most of their energy on a sand bar not too far out. That was just a bit of a butt pucker, first time this kayak was in the surf, but no real problems. I only put the bow underwater once.

Outside the break zone things were calm, still had some large, rolling waves. Only one moment of note one wave came through significantly larger than the rest. I was out far enough doing my best impression of a bobber for it to only cause a moment of concern. However, I imagine it would have ruined my day in the surf.

The tide was outgoing and stacking up the large, lazy rolling waves from the gulf at the mouth of the jetties. Watched offshore sport boats stop hard and pull a u-turn heading back in. The trip in was uneventful, the outgoing current necessitated I move out to deeper water a couple times.


tl;dr route three.