Sometimes during this time of year, the weather is too unpredictable. The original plan was to come over on Friday and leave on Sunday, but the forecasters called for rain Friday. Instead we came over on Saturday. Turns out the rain took it’s time to arrive and did not hit the island until later Saturday evening. The good news – we had a dry ride over on the Triumph. The Bad news – it cut the day a little short on Saturday.

Once we reached the Dog we got the house opened up and headed back down to the dock. With a full bucket of live shrimp in hand, we began to drop them in to catch the sheepshead. In a few short hours Eric and Doug brought up eleven keepers and a few shorts, with Eric bringing over two huge fish at 19 and 18 inches. Eric also scored a nice fat trout as well! The storms started in around 4:30pm and ran us back to the house.

We enjoyed a nice lasagna dinner and some Oyster radio and hit the sack early hopeful for a long day of fishing on Sunday.

When we woke the next morning, the temperature had dropped significantly and the wind was strong. Eric also discovered, much to our dismay, that the bubbler in the shrimp bucket had failed, leaving us with ‘fresh dead’ shrimp for the remainder of the trip. We bagged the shrimp and headed down to the docks. The wind was worse than we expected, but we attempted to fish for the sheep. After only a small perch to show for our time, we decided to go back to the house and clean the fish from the day before, and to get lunch (leftover lasagna!). After lunch we worked around the house, with Doug fixing some screens and Eric patching the hole in one of the kayaks. Then we headed back to the dock again for another try. We managed to catch a black drum – initially giving us hope that the sheep were down there as they look similar underwater – but that was all we caught. We decided to stop fighting the wind and throw some lines on the beach side and see what we could catch. The answer – not much. One small bonnet head shark took the bait but otherwise no luck. But the wind and temps were much nicer on the gulf side, and the views were great!

We packed up and got ready for a fish fry. Eric brought some shrimp to cook up as appetizers and expertly breaded the filets selected for dinner. Doug did the honors of giving them an oil bath and prepared some cheese grits as a side. If you haven’t had fresh caught fish fried up on the Dog then you are missing out! In the end we were fat, happy, and ready for bed.

Monday the morning weather was not much better than Sunday’s, so Doug and Eric decided to explore the east end of the island while waiting for the wind to drop and the water to rise. The beach on the east side was incredibly wide at low tide – probably 150-200 yards to the surf. The low water gave a great view of the normally underwater features, and now we are considering ways to access this part of the beach with the cart or the Triumph to take advantage of all of the structure and cuts that exist over there. Eventually we tried one last time down at the docks but only caught three puppy redfish.

Even though the weather made fishing difficult, the island did not disappoint. It was a great weekend and as always the fellas can’t wait to go over again!!!