Anyone ever tried it?
We spent the weekend up at the oldest son's near Jacksonville. Saturday morning we fished the marsh creeks near St. Augustine. Did okay on some specs up to 22" at the last of the incoming but we were waiting on the outgoing which is usually better fishing. The outgoing tide was just picking up when we were chased off the water by some major lightning. It stormed the rest of the afternoon and well into the night.
The old man with the big girl of the day.
I released her to breed some more. Her belly was concave so I assume she had just spawned.
The rest of them were released into the skillet.
Late Sunday morning we decided to go shrimping. Late summer brings a major migration of shrimp on the St. Johns river. It can be hit or miss depending on the amount of rainfall but we had read some reports that the size and quantity had been picking up. Down my way most shrimping is at night on the grass flats with a headlight and a dip net. In NE FL it's mostly with a cast net. We anchored up under a railroad bridge on a tributary of the St. Johns and then the work starts. We don't have a "real" shrimp cast net. We were using a standard 8' X 3/8 mesh bait net. Every time I have ever tried it before we would throw the net until we could not pick it up any more and end up with 1/2 gallon or so of shrimp in the 40-50 count range. Not even worth the effort so I was not terribly excited this time. Not only that but a couple of times in the past we snagged the net on rubble bad enough to have to tie it to a cleat and pull it loose with the boat. Then you spend the rest of the day trying to patch the holes in the net. I made the first throw and came up with 25-30 shrimp with 1/3 of them in the large range. Just to shorten the story, in an hour and a half of non-stop throwing the net we ended up with 2 gallons of nice size heads on shrimp and another gallon or so of the small stuff culled and thrown back to grow up. We were roasting, worn out, and a giant school of small shad had moved in making culling a pain in the butt. It was a ton of work and I probably sweated off 5 lbs. but that's not so bad when you bring home 8-10 lb. of fresh never been frozen scrimps. Of course the success required a stop at Winn-Dixie on the way home for some crab boil. We fired up the turkey fryer and boiled the entire lot. Even after stuffing our faces there was enough to go in the freezer for a couple more meals. There is a major difference in the taste of shrimp that were less than two hours from the net to the plate.
Sorry but we forgot the camera Sunday.
