Where to start. Been a heck of a past few weeks. New job, tons of kid stuff and of course the holidays. Good stuff but not alot of time for my favorite pastime. I did over the past couple of weeks squeeze in a couple of shore bound trips.
The south shore canals and passes are starting to fire up. Lots of trout, not many big ones yet. Never-the-less good, clean fun. Fish the channels when there is good current flow. Find current sweeping around corners or past points. The very things mentioned in Capt Mel's Skinny book. They are all happening now. Find the moving water. It sounds simple but its the simple things that matter. There is at times better current flow at the back of a channel than at the mouth. You have to start learning the parts of a channel to fish during what part of the tide.
The most successful lures so far for me have been;
1) DOA shrimp. Cast it uptide and work it back with the current. Let the water do the work! Try to keep it on the bottom. Glow/Gold glitter and Silver Glitter have worked best for me.
2) Rapala Xrap 06, Purple gold. Cast it at points and shoreline that are in the 2-4 foot range. Long pulls and then let it stall and start rising.
3) Mirrorlure Mirrordine. Work it SLOW. Cast it out, let it sink. Dont rip it back on those cold mornings
4) Loves Lures Float-n-Jig. This is the first time I have gotten a chance to use this. Stumpmaster recommended this a while back. WOW this thing decimated the fish. Cast, let it sink slow, then twitch and repeat.
The colder mornings have spurred on the bite and gotten rid of the no seeums! Its been great.
I also have been lucky enough to take out a visitor from up north and of course kids where I can. Nothing like seeing folks not used to this kinda action and fun have a great time. I love keeping track of the fish caught and numbers. For the 3 days in the past 2 weeks we caught well over 60 trout and flounder combined. My nephew and daughter are ready for some serious wading this year and even have started catching the fish on arties on their own. Funny as it sounds, I did not get that chance until my late 30s so.... I am pretty proud of them. I am especially proud of my nephew who learned how to use the dehooker today! It took a couple of trout to get the hang of it. He got it pretty good by the morning.
The neatest trip so far was a wading trip on the southshore this past Sat. Even though I lost my topwater setup, it was a great trip. ReelMojo and I took out someone he knew from up north. We waded all over the southshore flats. Where we found ledges and channels, we found the fish in the moving water. The best part of the trip was about 1/2 way into it looking on the exposed land and seeing a HERD of big black wild boar. I never knew they wandered the mangroves. They were out in force and pretty noisy. We kept our distance and followed them for a while. That was pretty cool.
Topping off the weekend for me was a trip to the drag races in Bradenton. I gotta say, the jet powered Semi Truck was one of the coolest thing I have ever seen!
Tight-lines everyone and try to get out right now if you can. The fish are there if you look for them!
Fishindad
Thanks for the report, great time had by all!
good report and pics too!
the trees that back up to sr64 behind the drag strip there, look like they are going to get uprooted when those jetdrags are out there.
Thanks for the report it was great. :toast
