Fishing Frenzy

The first evening trip of the week and I finally had some clients to take out for some windy winter fishing. They were not much at casting when they first arrived, but we worked with them a bit and they got good enough to hit the practice targets.

The strong southeast winds were approaching with the front at around 7pm this evening, and a bunch of sea grass was uprooted and floating everywhere, making it hard to retrieve baits and messing with their retrieve. The grass bed had floated over many of the best places and hiding lots of redfish and a few speckled trout. Both species were following the grass covered lures but acted skittish and wouldn't take the bait! The clients anxiously watched, continuously casting for the fish that wouldn't bite.

Eventually we had to leave the area, which was sand and grass beds around 18-30' deep. We headed off to areas more protected from the wind. We found some areas with the same bottom structure and depth, but had scattered oyster shell and not as much floating grass. There were not as many redfish here, but the size was better overall.

Working the Pink Hologram Devil Eye on a 1/16 oz. TruLoc jig head, slowly up and down, we thought we would have better results than with darker colors since the water was so clear. We were right, within a few attempts we had redfish chasing after the lures. When my clients saw the redfish following the bait and swirling the water they got so excited they kept retrieving the lure, so fast in fact, the fish couldn't catch it. I had to tell them to relax, and wait to set the hook once you feel the strike, since they needed to present the bait in front of the fish, with such clear conditions. The redfish started wolfing the lures down.

Five of them got solid hits that were hooked deep so they were able to boat their limits of reds in the 24" to 26.5" range fairly quickly.

Next, we hit a channel near some descending flats that was sand and mixed grass beds, to try for some speckled trout. The color we had been using was a bit sandier and we tried using the same action but the clients that were rigged differently, one with a Root beer Devil Eye and the other with a Strawberry one were getting all the hits, from pecker heads to 21 inches and there were a lot more where those came from.

The larger trout were lying in the potholes on top of the flats, there were not as many of them but they were quality fish. The drop off had more fish that were smaller in size, but there were some keepers mixed in there as well. They ended up with 14 speckled trout and plenty of action with a lot of throw-backs... not bad for a 3.5 hour trip!

Part of the success had to be attributed to the new TruLoc jig heads, because they have some great quality, sharp hooks!!! We didn't lose a single thing because of the hooks, but lost tails from two of the lures because of the way those redfish were sucking them in and no other worm could have done any better with the abuse those fish were dishing out.