10/5 Sand Key Pier

[ChathamAngler]

Family was in town to celebrate my dad’s birthday. They stayed on Clearwater beach so we decided to hit up Sand Key pier. Had 4 of my 5 kiddies, 2 other little guys under 5, dad, brother and brother-in-law all in tow. Posted up on the pier closest to the bridge from 8:00am - 10:00am.

Catch list:
14” black drum that we fried up - very tasty (what isn’t tasty fried)
6 small mangrove snapper
4 ladyfish
Bunch of pigfish

Ton of white bait around but the fish preferred the live shrimp. Did get caught on something on the bottom quite often. Half the time we only lost my hooks but the other times we lost the lead too. I spent most of my day replacing setups but the visitors and kids all had a ton of fun.

Saw a couple of flippers in the channel and a guy next to us caught a baby gag that he literally thought was going to be a monster. Thing hid in the rocks and his buddy got into the water in his sneakers and jeans and pulled it out by hand and the thing was maybe 10”. Needless to say we had plenty of laughs.

All in all a good day

[tristan]

The looks on their faces made it all worth while, didn't it?

[corpuszero]

Nice report. Spending most of the day doing setups sounds about right for a family that size, haha.

[seabird]

Nice report on the family outing. One of my favorite areas to fish.

[phishead]

Oct 5, 2019 22:52:28 GMT -5 ChathamAngler said:

Family was in town to celebrate my dad’s birthday. They stayed on Clearwater beach so we decided to hit up Sand Key pier. Had 4 of my 5 kiddies, 2 other little guys under 5, dad, brother and brother-in-law all in tow. Posted up on the pier closest to the bridge from 8:00am - 10:00am.

Catch list:
14” black drum that we fried up - very tasty (what isn’t tasty fried)
6 small mangrove snapper
4 ladyfish
Bunch of pigfish

Ton of white bait around but the fish preferred the live shrimp. Did get caught on something on the bottom quite often. Half the time we only lost my hooks but the other times we lost the lead too. I spent most of my day replacing setups but the visitors and kids all had a ton of fun.

Saw a couple of flippers in the channel and a guy next to us caught a baby gag that he literally thought was going to be a monster. Thing hid in the rocks and his buddy got into the water in his sneakers and jeans and pulled it out by hand and the thing was maybe 10”. Needless to say we had plenty of laughs.

All in all a good day

Ice report. My kid loves the pigfish fried whole.

[ChathamAngler]

Good to know on the pig fish. My oldest wants to eat everything but we usually throw them back if we don’t use them for bait. He’s also dying to try the ladyfish cakes, but I wasn’t in the mood to try those yesterday so gave them away for bait

[carlf]

Fun day. BTW, That last pic is a lane snapper.