March Fishing with John

Got out the other morning with John and fished the South Shore looking for reds and trout.  Cool start to the morning run as temps were down in the 40s but with a favorable weather forecast we launched from EG and headed south as usual.  We got the flat early before the sun was over the mangroves and with the birds working all around us we started looking for potholes.  We finally found those potholes as the sun started to rise and John was quick off the bat with a good quality fish for the cooler.  He waited patiently for the fish to pick it up before he set which seemed to be important this morning since the cooler weather had them a little slower on the bite.

John caught a couple more reds but the bite slowed in the outer potholes as the tide was pushing in pretty quick so we put the trolling motor down and cruised back to a big U-shaped hole that I've found fish in before on these tides.  We were rewarded with a pretty healthy trout (no pics) that went in the cooler as well. 

We waited out a few boats to clear the area before heading to Schuster's Hole along the mangroves as we thought the tide was getting about the right stage.  We caught a fish right off the bat and quickly got it in the cooler as well to finish out both family dinners. It was a little slow as we would get a bite every 10 min or so or about the time it took for the mullet to swing back around.  We could see the water ripple out in front of the hole and watch the mullet get a little closer and then we would usually get a strike.  We had lunch and missed a fish while eating and then got back to it from the deck and John got a good bite a little while later.

John had just missed a fish in the hole but on a couple of casts later stuck this one with a solid hookset.  The bite had picked up a little and the fish were sucking down the shrimp instead of picking it up and playing with it.  We also caught quite a few rat reds but they were covered up with spots and some had some very pretty blue tails.  It's almost like the tails were glowing and you could see the tails pretty far away from the boat after you hooked up on them.  Maybe I should have studied redfish?

We had caught upwards of 10 fish and the cooler full with a couple of reds being 22+, so we decided to explore just a little before the tide ran out. 

I jumped up on the trolling motor and trolled around the mangroves looking for fish and we found some pretty large fish sitting up closer to the mangroves on some shallow broken water areas out of the wind.  They were pretty spooky so of course we ended up spooking them all off the shoreline in some really shallow water.  I had never looked in those areas before but now I know where to go back to on that tide to find some fish to chase from the poling tower because the trolling motor and especially the powerpole were to much for those spooky fish.  They would be really fun to hunt with an artificial or a free lined shrimp.  From there it was the top of the tide so we decided to call it a day and we made a quick run back to the launch to load up and to clean some fish for dinner.