Tuesday, 10-20-15 GKF @ Redneck Beach in Yankeetown, FL

The date had been set a month prior and several of the gals had made plans to take the day off from work that day in desperate need of a change of scenery and in hopes of a super fun adventure catching fish and hanging out.  Amazing and unexpected things happen on the water every day and you never know what you're going to witness from one day to the next.  One thing's for sure....you can't be a part of it if you're not out there.

The coastal days prior to the outing had been pretty windy by all reports and this day's prediction seemed to follow the same course.  A few of the ladies bowed out of the trip because of this but three decided to "throw caution to the wind", literally, and followed through on the meet-up.  Maybe Mother Nature would show some mercy and surprise the crew with an unexpected hassle free day.

Delores, driving from Ocala, and Louise, driving from New Port Richie, met up at 7:00 a.m. at the Hook Line & Sinker bait and tackle shop in Yankeetown.  They spent a few minutes inside, browsing the aisles to see what caught the eye and chatting with Nickie behind the counter before walking out with a bucket of live shrimp.  Then it was back on the road and heading for an area called Redneck Beach.

Redneck Beach is just a small clearing off the side of Highway 40 West on the left about 100 yards before you reach the boat ramp at the end of Hwy 40 in Yankeetown.  Most folks just throw a couple of lawn chairs in the sand and fish the Withlacoochee River right before it feeds out into the Gulf of Mexico.  It's probably not the best place to launch kayaks because you never know how fast the current is running in the middle of the river or when a boat is going to come buzzing around the bend at full throttle.  If it's a strong current then a kayaker is in danger of being pushed by the current faster than they can paddle against it.   This would be the first time in a very long time that we've ventured to cross it to explore some new fishing grounds.  We were anxious to see what the surroundings looked like once we got there.

We were hoping that no one else had the same or similar idea about launching or fishing at Redneck Beach this early in the morning on a workday Tuesday, but you never know.  So we were delighted to see that we were going to have the site all to ourselves when we arrived.  Sue and Delores helped Louise unload her kayak and then Sue and Louise helped Delores do the same and then Sue's kayak was unloaded last.  The next half hour was spent gearing up and parking vehicles.

The overall plan was to get to the west side of Chamber's Island and fish all of that area.  The question was which route we would eventually take to get there.  We knew we'd have to paddle across the Withlacoochee River, which wasn't too big of a deal, we just weren't sure how fast the current was running with an outgoing tide.  So....should we circumnavigate the east side of the Island and work our way around or should we take a chance on a small short-cut that we hadn't tried before and see if it would pay off and get us to the other side faster.  The circumnavigation was a sure thing.  We knew we could paddle that, but it would take longer.  We weren't sure if the short cut was one we could get all the way through.  A satellite image gave us the impression that it may be too shallow to pass.  We may be forced to turn back and take the long way anyway in which case we would lose valuable fishing time.  Decisions....Decisions.....

By 8:30, it was sunny and 61 degrees with a high of 80.  It was turning out to be a perfect morning as we paddled across the Withlacoochee River toward the shortcut.  Even though high tide was at 6:00, we still had plenty of outgoing water to carry us through the shortcut and the current crossing the river was manageable enough.  As we navigated the creek we could see swirling water on both sides of us from the fast current and we had a feeling that the creek itself had the potential to hold lots of fish.  We had to make a mental note of that because three people fishing the creek at the same time was a bit too much congestion. There would always be time to paddle back to the mouth of the creek if anyone wanted to do that.

Once we made it to the west side of Chamber's Island, we split up.  Sue turned around and headed back into the creek and Louise and Delores started fishing the grass line.  By 9:30, Louise had caught her first redfish of the day and between her and Delores, several small redfish were caught and released over the period of a couple of hours.

We continued to monitor the weather and wind speed during the course of the morning and everything seemed to be peaceful and calm on the west side of the island.

From a Google Earth view, there looked to be an excellent lunch spot that we were anxious to check and so right about 11:00, we paddled up on it and was pleasantly surprised at how accommodating it was for kayaks and so we were able to take a break, explore, and eat a bite.

We canvased a small section of the shoreline picking up trash, recovering lost tackle, and collecting a couple of horseshoe crab skeletons that were fully in-tact.  Through the trees we were able to get a glimpse of the east side of the island and discovered that the wind was blowing pretty strong.  It was then that we realized we had a false sense of security with our weather prediction because those trees had blocked much of the wind from us.  But....maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked.

We were having such a nice time scouring the island and just chillin' that we really lost track of the tidal flow.  Our kayaks were practically beached before we realized it and we had to hustle to get them back in the water and floating.  The water was still calm and we were trying to determine if we were going to circumnavigate the rest of the island while we fished our way back to the launch site or were we going to take the easy way back going the same way we had come....through the shortcut creek.

Our intent was to paddle around the point and fish the shoreline on the left (deeper water) all the way back to the launch site but as soon as Sue, who was in front at the time, made her way around the bend she discovered that the wind was much stronger than we had anticipated and we weren't comfortable going any futher.  We had no intentions of working any harder than we already were to get back.  We decided to turn around and paddle in shallow water with some, although very little, protection from the wind. 

We made a few attempts to fish during that paddle back to the shortcut creek, it was very infrequent or we trolled a live shrimp behind.  The wind played tricks on us, switching from dead zero...not even a breeze, to gusts of 15 mph, but we knew where we were headed so we paced ourselves to get back to the mouth of the creek.

When we made it back to the creek, we couldn't help but notice the amount of water that was pouring out, giving us the impression that there would be predator fish lying-in-wait along the edges taking advantage of smaller fish being swept out by the strong current.  Knowing that we really shouldn't stop to fish it because we were already taking a chance on getting back through the creek while the tide was going out, we just couldn't pass it up so we convinced ourselves that it would be worth the delay.

Unfortunately, it wasn't!  And to add insult to injury, we had made the mistake of staying there a little too long and really struggled to paddle the shortcut creek against the westward blowing wind along with a strong outgoing tide.  We managed.....but it was a fight. 

We finally made it back to Redneck Beach, a little exhausted but proud of ourselves that we didn't get swept out to sea in the process.  We pat ourselves on the back and vowed never to do that again...although we probably will.  We helped one another load up gear, talked and laughed about the short fishing day and went on home relieved that we had made it off the water safely.

Will we go back there again?  SURE
Will we be more careful about the wind predictions?  SURE
Will we let weather reports dictate our every move?  Probably NOT