Day 3 of fishing the county pier, my final day down on the Emerald Coast for chasing King mackerel in Panama City Beach. I only have a half day this day, because I have to load up the truck for the 300+ miles to get back home. After the morning on Day 2 being a bust I decided I would rather have another hour of sleep and start slow with a coffee on the beach, just chilling on the shore with the waves on my legs. So I got all my stuff loaded up into the truck, went to the lobby for my free coffee, and took a short walk on the beach. Fishing is great, but you don’t need to run yourself ragged doing it, especially if you expect it to be slow. Now with a coffee warming me up, it was time to check out and head over to the pier to get some fishing in before I had to leave.
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Word of the slow morning the day before spread as fast, so the parking lot was a lot emptier this morning. I got my cart loaded up and walked up the pier house and asked the guy in the office if anything had been caught. And of course, he tells me a run of big axe-handle Spanish mackerel had come through right at sunrise. Oh well, no point in getting upset over missed fish, I had plenty of Spanish on ice anyways, no need to be greedy. So getting through the gate I started my walk and noticed the weather conditions had changed a good bit overnight. The wind was still blowing from the East but was a lot weaker today. The water was also getting dirtier, with sediment visible in the water column. Both of these changes were exactly what I didn’t want.
My bad feeling about the day was right, the end of the pier was pretty dead. The big Spanish were already gone, and nothing had followed after them. I ran into my buddy and custom rod maker Ernie though, so at least we could chat while we fished this dead water. While the predators were gone, the bait and birds were thick on the end. I was throwing a knife jig to hopefully find a Spanish or Bonita, but instead only got a pelican that dive-bombed the splash of the jig hitting the water. He immediately popped my main line on the light setup and flew off. So I decided to just fish for bait, might as well with how thick it was out there. I dropped my sabiki down and started catching cigar minnows and goggle eyes. I kept them in the brine slush in my kill bag to keep for my friend Ivan. He likes to bag up and freeze bait for use on a rainy day. I kept catching baits until another pelican flew out from under the pier and snagged my sabiki. He broke off the rig, and I said screw it to fishing the end of the pier. Ernie also was done casting at no fish, so we both decided to head towards the middle T of the pier to try there.
Up closer to shore we some action going on, there was a ton of bait hiding in the shadow of the pier that was getting slashed by big Spanish mackerel. It looked and sounded like it was raining bait with how the cigar minnows would jump trying to dodge the mackerel. I tried throwing my Spanish mackerel rig from the night before, but couldn’t buy a bite with it. So I kept switching up my rigs for the next hour or two trying to get one of these Spanish to bite. I kept downsizing my tackle from wire down to 60lb fluorocarbon then down to 40 lb fluorocarbon on a long shank hook. This finally got me a strike right next to the pier, but the mackerel only got the tail of my live bait. I gave up on chasing those Spanish and went back to artificials with a small spoon behind an egg sinker.
After a couple of casts, I saw some bait getting worked on a bit closer to shore. So I ran over and threw at them and got a bite. It wasn’t a big Spanish but it was a fish and legal to keep. I threw at the bait again, hoping for a repeat but only got a couple of ladyfish instead. After tossing back the second ladyfish, the birds struck again on the next cast. I had another damn pelican fly into my wind loop. I tried to flick the line off but he got the spoon hook stuck in his wing and then had me pinned to the rail for a bit. I had to wait on Ernie to get a pier net to bring the damn bird up to the deck.
We got the stupid bird over the rail, and popped the hook out of him. He took a couple of steps away from us and then tried to bite another guy who was fishing. After that, he flew off. After dealing with almost more birds than fish at this point I felt like it was time to start packing and cleaning up my gear. I got all my bigger tackle sorted and just kept fishing the sabiki rig to catch more goggle eyes. I ended up with a couple dozen that I gave to Ernie and Ivan to freeze up. While I was chasing goggle eyes, Ernie got a nice slot redfish to eat a small hardtail(blue runner) right on the first sandbar in the pompano hole. While this last day wasn’t as fish filled as the first couple of my trip, it wasn’t too bad besides the damn birds. I did miss all the big runs of mackerel for the trip, but oh well it happens. Timing is key on the pier and the ones who put in the most time on the pier catch the most. I’ll hopefully be back down in the spring and go fish the bay with Ernie after I pick up another custom rod from him.
