Greetings all. Well here we are in August and much has happened that was not memorialized on our blog. It has been a bit of a slow summer fishing wise. The Willfish team have been out to the Dog a few times, as had individuals with the family. Again, not a lot of amazing things to report. Let’s face it, it’s slow out there right now. The most recent trip was last weekend for the Willfish team that resulted in an interesting variety of fish, but not a large volume of fish. First off, Eric had potential jury duty hanging over his head on the Friday, so we had to plan for both possibilities. Thankfully he did not have to report so all 4 of us were able to get out on the island. We stopped by to pick up two new crab traps in the hopes of catching them while we fished for other things. It was a great plan, but they caught NOTHING lol. We will learn from this and try again the next time. Friday was hot. Like crazy hot. We fished a few hours in the harbor but had no success. Finally the rains came in and forced us back to the cottage for a much needed break. Once the rains broke we headed back down for some more fishing, and even tried to take the boat around the harbor in the hope we could grab some mullet. The boat proved to be a great platform to throw from, but the mullet did not want to cooperate. We then decided to get out in the bay and see what we could catch there.

We found the fishing again to be slow. Tossed jigs, topwaters, jerkbaits, and only caught a handful of not eating sized fish. One of them happened to be a pinfish foul hooked in the butthole by Doug. That fish was put on a popping cork rig for Dave to monitor as we went back to fishing. A little bit later – a massive splash followed by the popping rig’s drag ripping told us we had something big on the line! Dave played it just right. Speculation began – is it a shark? A drum? Soon it came to the surface and no large dorsal fin. We agreed it had to be a Cobia! Everyone reeled in so Dave could maneuver around the boat, and once he wore the fish out, Eric gaffed him and pulled him over the rails! We decided it was time to pack it up and get back to the dock so we could clean the fish asap (too big for the cooler).

That evening, after a tasty bratwurst dinner, we headed back down to the docks for some night fishing. The water was out due to low tide so it was not as productive as we had hoped. We did however put a puppy drum and a sand trout in the cooler for the following nights fish fry.

The next day we tackled the beach. Again, the fishing was slow but we were catching fish. Just not ones we wanted to eat. Ben reeled in a nice pompano which was a welcome sight this time of year. Mostly we were catching the ‘trash can slam’ varieties – ladyfish, catfish and stingrays. We did pick up a whiting or two to add to the dinner catch.

After lunch we went back out on the boat into the bay. The fishing was hot – If you were Ben and liked sailcats! We caught some undersized trout and a few edible fish ( A Blue and a very large golden croaker). The crab traps put out the night before as mentioned were empty as we came back in, so we loaded them up and took them back to the cottage.

That night Eric prepared the fish and some gigantic shrimp he brought over, while Doug did the frying and Ben finished the pepper jack cheese grits (next level btw). We ate like kings! Unlike the evening before, we all turned in pretty early. Hurricane Debby was heading our way and we knew we had to get off the Dog sooner than later.

The next day we ate our usual Dog Island hearty breakfast and got the cottage in order. Then we made the crossing which was a little bit wet (A lot wet for Doug lol). And everyone made it home.

I will try to do a little better at keeping this updated!

Thanks for reading –

Dog Island Doug