Seaweed wasn't to bad but every now and then clumps would come through. The Current was flowing real good when we got there but ended up tapering off to nothing as the night progressed. First bite of the night came just as the sun was setting when I nabbed up this nice 25"+ black on a live shrimp. 30lb Power pro, 40lb gamma Fluro, 2O Circle Hook, made a for a quick fight.
We put him on the stringer and got back to fishing. After about 20mins I notice the boat is moving back up river against the current and at first I was a bit confused but then after a few good tugs on the anchor line I saw the culprit. A big old manatee was playing with our anchor line basically grabbing it and swimming away with it. I've had my fair share of encounters with manatee's but nothing like this. He was obsessed with our anchor line, and numerous times got a bit tangled up in it. After the anchor line bored him, he would then proceed to just push the boat around with his face, or just roll over and stare at us while floating on his back. He would not leave us alone, and it began to make our fishing impossible. We tried several tactics to scare him off, such as starting the motor(neutral of course), Other forms of excessive noise, splashing at him, and he just thought it was a big game. He also wouldn't leave our shrimp lights alone, or the black drum we had on our stinger. We pretty much had to put up with this character all night, and all though it was annoying it was also real cool for him to be just chilling with us. At one point he even tried to high five me.
So after learning to work around our new friend, who we named "Roger" we caught some more Blacks. I got another one right around 23" and Ben caught his first Black Drum ever, after loosing a monster one in the rocks below. Once the current stopped we left for the night. Yum I like Black Drum!
