Jacksonville Beach - Wes and I got tho the beach about 7:30AM. It was windy (and cold) but there was not much of a current. It was high tide around 8am, so we were fishing in some good deep water. I didn't see any mullet in the surf, but things were pretty churned up. We had steady bites from the bluefish all morning and took home a dozen. We had a blast.
I fished a couple of hours Saturday morning as well. Brought home two bluefish, after a crazy encounter with a seagull.
It's not uncommon to see a seagull swoop down towards my bait, when it first pops out of the water onto dry land. The seagulls usually swoop down towards the bait, but then realize that the mullet is rushing towards a man with a 10ft long stick, and then pull up and fly away. Saturday AM it looked like this was happening with a seagull, from a group of birds that were hanging out nearby. But instead of flying away as the bait got closer to me, the seagull continued to grab the mullet, until I had it completely reeled in, and then he proceeded to EAT IT right off the hook!!! I shook my rod to try and scare him away, but his flapping caused him to become entangled in my leader. I was worried he would get hooked so I tried to pull the leader off his shoulder, but he tried to bite me. That beak is much larger up close! Anyway, to try and prevent worse tangling, and to try and make it easier to remove, I cut the leader off my line. The seagull immediately tried to fly away, but there was a 4oz pyramid sinker on the leader, that was too heavy for him. He flew a short distance, then went down in the surf. He was getting rolled over by the waves, and I realized I had to intervene or he would drown. I waded out a bit and grabbed the seagull by the wing. He bit the hell out of my hand, but I manged to grab the end of the leader, and drag him onto dry land. I worked the end of the leader loose, which avoiding that beak, and was able to unclip the weight. The rest was too tangled, so I let the seagull go, and he flew away, wearing the leader like a piece of new jewelry.