Panama City Beach, Florida

Sadly, we didn’t get to hit the beach again until the summer of 2009. This time, we decided to try our luck at Panama City Beach, Fl. Mention Panama City Beach, and a lot of people think about the rowdy college crowd during the spring break. That reputation may be well deserved, but Panama City Beach is also a very popular fishing rivaling Destin. It’s also slightly closer to Atlanta than Destin, being situated almost directly south of Columbus, GA. So in August 2009, we once again packed our humble set of fishing gear and headed down to Florida Panhandle. One bad thing about our trip this time was the accommodation. We noticed that the hotels in Panama City were generally cheaper than the ones in Destin, but they were older, and service wasn’t as good. I can’t remember the name of the hotel we stayed in, but it was less than satisfactory. The bed was smaller, the carpet seemed a little dingy, and there was no free breakfast other than some sugary donuts that we did not touch. Well, you can’t have everything, right? After all, we were here for fishing. On day 2, we headed to Russell-Field City Pier. We read somewhere that the pier was fairly new. One thing we noticed about the pier was that it was quite a bit longer than the Okaloosa Island Pier, at 1500 feet. I think Okaloosa was about 1200 feet. The pier was made mostly of concrete with wooden rails. The fish cleaning stations were large and clean, there were plenty of benches, end of the pier was very wide, and the pier itself was very wide. Overall, I liked the Russell-Field pier better than the Okaloosa. Well, but that doesn’t mean much if we can’t catch fish right? So with our eager hands, we tried our luck with some shiny lures. After about 30 minutes, my husband caught a keeper-size Spanish mackerel. I had to admit that I was a little bit jealous. We finished for a few more hours but decided to wrap it up and try again the next day. We were still tired from driving and could use a good night’s sleep.

The following morning, we were in luck. The fish started to bite, and eagerly so. My husband landed a few more Spanish mackerels, and I did too. It was a lot of fun, especially since Spanish mackerel fights very hard. But all the casting and retrieving made our arms sore, so we decided to do “lazy” fishing for a while and took out our shrimp bait. We continued to do very well, landing a nice sized flounder, about half a dozen small porgy-type fish, a spadefish, and a stingray. We were glad that we had brought some salt with us along with the ice cooler, because we could make sure all our precious catch would not spoil in the hot weather. We fished well into the night because we were having so much fun. This was the most productive fishing trip ever for us.