# St. George and St. Joe Bay Scallop and fish report



## rhj4 (Aug 24, 2011)

Spent the week of the 15th down at St. George and did a little fishing. When we got down there the wind was stiff from the west and the water was pretty mucked up at high and low tides. Needless to say the fishing was slow in the bay.
We fished a little from the boat with no luck and decided to just sit out at the cut and try our luck there. We caught several reds that were either too large or too small for the slot but did manage  one slot fish caught by my son in-law Allen .  Also caught enough trout and spanish to eat for the entire week, not to mention 4 or 5 really nice flounder.

One evening at the cut about two hours into the out going tide the cut came alive with fish. I have seen this before at the cut but it has been several years. The bait was so thick you could almost walk across the cut. The tarpon came in first and they left after the sharks arrived. There were 7 to 8 foot sharks ripping through the bait and torpedoing up through them and completely leaving the water and crashing down like a stick of dynamite. We just watched but several people hooked up and were spooled and everyone was catching sailcats if their bait got down through the sharks. I read that sail cats are restricted in Fl. now but have no idea why. They seem to be everywhere.

I want to thank all who gave advice on the scalloping. I did head over to St. Joe Bay and scalloped for the first time. We put in at Presnells Marina and I have to admit that I was warned that the bay was shallow and you guys were not lying. The guy at Pressnells told me to get the boat up on plane in the first 100 feet or so and then hang a left out to Blacks Island and whatever I do, do not take it off of plane. I followed advice and ran in  14 inches of water all the way over without any problem.  On the way back I lost my nerve or had better sense and idled all of the way back. 

We stopped several places to look for scallops and found a few and then I decided to move to a little deeper water that had not been so picked over and hit the mother load. No one mentioned that those suckers will bite you and it hurts. Anyway the 3 of us picked up our limit of the largest bay scallops I have ever had in about one hour. The down side to that is that someone has to clean them. A couple of margaritas and a few hours later we were ready to eat.


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## Norm357 (Aug 25, 2011)

Nice! Looks like a great time!


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