Well I really enjoy summertime fishing but it requires an early wake up call and it's pretty much done by lunch since the water gets hot and the thunderstorms usually are starting to fire up pretty early. So with those caveats, John and Lindsay joined me a Cockroach the other morning on an incoming early morning tide. We started off looking for big snook with topwater which I think is one of my favorite things in the world to do. Well it didn't take us very long after getting on the trolling motor to find some fish. I started pretty quickly by having a nice blow up and miss only to have it get slammed again and after a brief fight I ended up pulling the hooks. I figure it was a nice red since it missed the plug on the first swipe and it stayed down deep. We kept following the tide around the mangroves edges making long casts and we had a couple of blow ups and caught a few small jacks. We got up to one point in some skinny water with a lot of current and I had a huge blow up about 15 ft off the mangroves. Instantly I knew it was a big fish. She came out of the water and it was a rather large snook. It jumped quite a few times and I had her rolling over and was trying to at least get her away from the mangroves and back closer to the boat and the hooks just pulled. I guess I just put a little to much pressure and that was that. The boat estimate was 35+ inches so she would have looked great in some pictures but now she can just keep getting bigger in our imaginations! We set up shop there for a few minutes and John ended up with a smaller red from behind the mangroves. We worked our way around the corners and current flows of the mangroves looking for some more and although we had some more blow ups we were unable to find any to bring into the boat.
We then put the big motor down and put-putted back to some of my summer redfish holes that I've been fishing for a few years now. Well the holes didn't disappoint.
We started off with a nice red on a free lined shrimp. The bite was kinda slow with the warmer water but the were eating! We caught a couple more from our first position but I thought they might be a little further around the corner as the current picked up. So after a quick re-position of the boat we were back on them again.
We caught fish on every presentation - freelined shrimp, shrimp tipped jigs and under a cork. We even had a double.
Look at the spots!
As that bite slowed we moved down to a cut in the mangroves and it wasn't long before we found fish there as well. I lost one literally on the first float. Then we kept working and ended up with quite a few more reds, trout and mangrove snapper.
Watch Lindsay's move on the next video to get out of the mangroves on the right side about half way through the fight. Another double to boot.
We had a pretty good time catching fish today and as the tide dying, the summer heat warming everything up and running out of shrimp we decided to call it a day and head back to the launch. I was able to get some pretty good video as well so enjoy cause we sure did on the water.
Well fishing during early July has been well tough for me. I've had a couple of trips out with one not even making it out to the flat (winds/waves) and a couple with only a few shots a fish. I did loose a pretty nice snook with Dr. Schuster a few weeks ago after I didn't change out my leader to summer weights i.e. 30lb flouro and that big snook promptly chewed through my leader and took off with my miromullet.
Tony and I went out a week or so ago and fished a slow outgoing at Weedon and caught one lonely redfish though we saw lots of nice reds they just wouldn't bite. It's been pretty warm and some crazy weather with some big storms coming through so I guess they were just turned off.
I got to go down to Naples for a conference this past week and got to fish for some beach snook before the sun came up with the fly rod. The first morning I didn't really know what I was doing and ended up spooking every fish that I casted to. I just needed a lighter offering as I was fishing with a little bit to much weight and I need a more white colored fly to imitate the bait that was in the water and the snook were keying in on. So the next morning I had a little more time to fish and I had spent some time with my vise the night before tying a fly with less weight and with a little more white.
Luckily it worked like a charm and the first fish I saw in the morning in the little cut from a little backwater that was flushing on the last of the incoming tide. I was walking the outside bar and I saw the snook up on the sand coming towards me from the mangroves. I made a 20 ft cast and at first the snook backed off towards the mangroves but as I started hopping the fly across the sand with the current he charged out and picked it right up and then it was game on. I eventually got it away from the mangroves and after a couple of quick jumps I got it up to where I could land it and get a release video.
Fished with Vance and his son Issac this past Friday on my off day after our Independence Day. I usually avoid fishing on national holidays but thought we would be ok since it we figured most people might still have to work. Well after a wait at the bait shop we got the ramp and were pleasantly surprised about the lack of trucks around the launch. After getting the boat in the water we made a quick run out of CRB and to the flats to look for some early morning trout. We started a drift and it wasn't long before we were into quite a few trout. All were shorts but they were fun and we caught quite a few drifting over the grass with shrimp under popping corks.
Issac got into the hang of it as well and got to reel in quite a few fish.
We ended up with 12+ trout or so in very short time. We also pulled in a nice bonnet head shark, some catfish, pinfish and a lady fish for the trashcan slam. I also was able to pull a nice trout in on a topwater which was pretty fun as well. We found all the fish in and around the sandbar and in the clean water. When the water got dirty we didn't have as much luck. It was then around 9:30 or so and I thought since we were doing so well out front that the reds must be eating along the mangroves as well so we pulled inside to some of my favorite summer holes. Well we were pretty disappointed in there as there wasn't much current for some reason but we were able to catch a mangrove snapper and one rat red.
We ended up leaving a little after 11:30 but my tire was going a little slack on the right front and by the time I got to the gas station it was really running low and with the big screw it the treads I knew I wasn't getting home, so luckily Vance was there to help and after a quick but not Nascar tire change I was back home to wash everything down for next time. Thanks Vance and Issac for helping me get the tire changed and thanks for the great morning at CRB!
Next time I won't be so eager to leave fish to find fish. With all the rain we've had over the past week or so and some big falling tides in the afternoon I would think that the fish might be a little "off" and I think the key was to find the clear water on the flats.
I just got in my new accessory for my Yeti and though I've been using it
for a while as a casting platform it needed a bit of an upgrade to make
it perfect so I took the plunge and ordered the SeaDek for it and just
installed it. It looks great and I think will be much easier on the
knees and more stable. Also, it will pad at least a little if someone is
riding on the cooler which doubles as my jump seat in front of my
console. I absolutely love my Yeti and being that my truck also doubles as an office and I do a lot of work outside, my cooler is a pretty important piece of gear. I've had this cooler for over a year now and the only time it hasn't had ice and drinks in it was when I've done a quarterly clean out. It's a little scuffed up but these things are built to last and it was worth every penny.
So I've been out on a couple of short trips to Weedon Island over the past few weekends and have had some success on artificials since the bait shops around here don't open early enough for the bite during the summer.
The other week I went out solo looking for an early morning topwater bite and I found plenty of big fish that really didn't feel like playing. I missed a couple aggressive strikes along a mangrove shoreline leading into the backcountry and as I floated in with the tide I saw many large snook and reds away from the bank in feeding lanes. Unfortunatel, by that point I had spooked them so I moved around and jigged back behind me and ended up with a perfect slot red up under the mangroves that I didn't spook out. I then ventured into the back country pushing fish left and right and ended up with a couple more slot sized reds in with the mullet. While working my way back out I saw more snook that I had ever seen in my life but after throwing the kitchen sink at them I was convinced that they just weren't willing to bite this morning and gave up.
I went back to that same place a week later around the full moon with Dr. Schuster and all those large fish were gone to probably the beaches to spawn. We fished for a few hours throwing artificials and all we had to show was one lost mirromullet that got taken by a pretty hefty snook. We found some mullet activity and casting through the mullet yielded a violent strike and after a couple of tailwalks and runs towards the boat she finally realized she was hooked and smoked out away from the boat. I was unable to raise the rod tip up high enough to keep from cutting through the leader so away she went with my lure. Oh well it was a great 10 seconds or so and made the day for myself. We had another couple of blowups a few minutes later but no hookups. We ended up with the dreaded skunk but hey that's fishing. We had a great morning and we knew going in that it was going to probably be all or nothing.
.JPG)
