Fishing the Fort in Dec.

Well the first time I've been back in the skiff in a month and a half went pretty well as Kate and I went out for a boat ride and a quick scouting trip for the weekend.  I was looking for pot holes and reds but I found trout instead.  I was pulling them in one after another in a couple of holes with some shrimp and I found a solid 17incher and put it in the cooler for dinner.  After stinging quite a few trout we moved inside the mangroves to look for reds and though we saw some they weren't stacked and they weren't really biting so as the wind kicked up we fired up and headed back to the dock to get back for an afternoon conference call.

John and I fished on Sat and worked the same pattern that Kate and I had figured out the day before, except we started a little while earlier and threw some topwater right off the bat.  Not many casts in we were in the trout and some of them were pretty solid.  We put a few 17 inchers in the boat before they seemed to move off the grass and into the potholes as the tide kept falling.  So we switched tactics a little and threw shrimp on jig heads into some of the larger potholes with some quick and solid action.  As the mullet moved in around us along with some other boats I got a good thump and was rewarded with a nice gator trout. 

Right around that trout I also got another thump along with a quick short run of something a little larger.  I was thinking catfish until it started peeling off line with some heft to it.  It took a little work to get it back closer to the boat and kept it's head buried into the grass before I saw this massive red come up out of the grass.  After a little work around the boat navigating the powerpole and pushpole I was able to land this beast of a red.  It was a little over 32 inches and probably the biggest red I've put in the boat.

After a couple of pictures and quick release we drifted some other holes and ran into the mangroves to look for some other reds and snook.  Although we did find some snook we were unable to get them to bite and after a couple of catfish and ladyfish we decided to call it a day as we had a cooler full of trout and we both wanted to get home to watch some football.  I bet we boated 20+ trout and quite a few trash fish and one extra large red to keep us wanting to get back out there.  Hopefully really soon!