True Fish Tales

I've got a good fishing buddy and his family in the area this week and he and I fished two full days on Monday and Tuesday. He's a good fisherman and I'm fairly decent but it seems like we never catch much when we fish together. That was the situation again until about 5:00 P.M. Monday afternoon when we pulled the boat into a nearby creek off the intracoastal waterway and promptly got stuck in the mud at low tide. If you're gonna get stuck, there's no beter time than low tide-the water may come in slowly, but you'll be afloat in a couple of hours. If you're high and dry at high tide, you'd better find something to keep you occupied for the next 12 hours. We ended up in soft, black plough (pronounced "pluff)" mud, staring at a "moonscape" of oyster mounds and clumps of spartina and turtle grass. We were in about 6 inches of water which extended 50 yards to our left, then it was nothing but mud. We had just grounded the boat when we heard a noise that sounded like someone dropping a concrete block in the shallow water. A huge circle wake appeared followed by noisy swirls and more "explosions." Those noises in that place meant one thing-big redfish. We fumble with our gear to get a mullet or shrimp out to them and it was just second when one mauled a bait and took off toward the oyster rocks in an attempt to cut the line. I yanked him away from the oysters and horsed him in-a fine 25- inch copper colored fish. That scene played out again about 20 times in the next two hours and we probably lost 10 or 12 others in the oysters. We were using popping corks to suspend the bait just off the bottom and our line would usually break above the cork leaving it floating in the marsh. J.P. hooked a big fish that broke his line but the way the cork moved through the water it was obvious the fish was still attached to the hook, leader and cork. We could see it circle around for over an hour. At one point it got withing casting range and I threw a mullet near him-J.P. had the same idea at the same time. Sure enough, the fish that had already been hooked and still had hook and line in his mouth was still hungry. He pounced on my bait and I hooked him. He got tangled in J.P.'s line also, so we both reeled in the fish and landed it-he had caught the fish twice and I had caught it once. Never done or seen that in 45 years of fishing.
Yesterday we made a beeline for the magic spot and waited for the tide to pull most of the water out of the creek. We slayed 'em again. Again, J.P. broke off a fish that pulled cork, hook and line around for about 3 hours. We kept an eye on the rig and as we left we swooped over and lifted the cork-the fish that was attached was soon in the boat-another huge red. We plowed through the shallows out into the creek mouth and it was up "on plane" and back to the dock. Two full days of great fishing and great times.