The trout of the year….so far

Time for an update. The fishing has been….demanding for some of us that fish light tackle in close to shore, and especially those of us cursed with high expectations. Hot water, abundant floating grass, and a relative lack of redfish compared to past years has made some trips very challenging. Among the most frustrating was fishing the Doug Johnson Reeling for Kids tournament.  This great event, the largest on the upper gulf coast, is always the highlight of the year for me. It’s for a great cause, and I was especially happy to be able to fish again this year with Noah Brindise. Last year we had an amazing couple of days of fishing, probably landing 10 large redfish, most oversize. I was concerned, though, because I had a trip the week before with Phil Evans; we targeted redfish, fished hard for 6 hours in some of my best spots, and caught none. The grass made fishing topwaters almost impossible and the baitfish were not in close.  Fishing with Noah and his friend, Greg Cattalanotte, turned out to be just as frustrating. We did find a few trout but only one redfish. Most were catching larger trout in 8 to 10 feet of water, even in the early morning when they usually come in close.

Between the heat and lack of good fish, it made for a frustrating few days, but the tournament was a great success, raising over $180,000 for the Alachua County Boys and Girls Clubs.  I hope to be able to fish it again next year.

This past weekend I took out my former colleague, Bob Watson and his son Jason. One of the early times I fished Steinhatchee, probably about 12 years ago or so,  Bob, Jason and I learned how not to fish Steinhatchee in the winter. Hopefully I’ve learned a bit about the area since then.  This was a birthday trip for Jason, and we still had some challenging conditions. We started out Friday afternoon,  just to explore a bit, without much hope for big fish. The grass was reasonably bad, and Jason, who loves fishing topwaters like I do, spent a lot of time getting grass off his trebles. I rigged a Texas-rigged soft jerkbait (specifically the new Die Dapper Bass Assasin in a glow color) for Bob. When they are rigged weedless, they are a great bait; they can be reeled right through heavy grass.  We went to one of my favorite spots, which has recently been overgrown with widgeon grass, a primarily freshwater grass that usually has died back by now. Bob was working the bait through some weeds when he hooked what was obviously a very large fish. Because it didn’t come right to the surface, I thought it might be a redfish but it didn’t take long to realize it was a really big trout. Bob worked the fish very carefully, making it through a number of screaming drag runs, before I slipped the net under this giant trout.

 This fish measured 26 inches and weighed 6.25 pounds on my Boga, by far the largest trout I’ve seen this year. In fact this fish would have won every tournament this year…if it had been caught at the right time.  Bob wanted to keep the fish, but we had a little problem getting it into the 45 quart Yeti cooler…

We caught several other trout that afternoon, but we decided we’d head back and try things in the morning. Saturday didn’t turn out to be great day. We tried to find Jason a cobia unsuccessfully, and fished a number of usually productive areas, but the grass again made things very challenging. We did manage to find one decent redfish, caught on a topwater, and Bob got another nice 4.5 pound trout.

In spite of the tough conditions, it was great fun to spend some more time with Bob and Jason, and Noah and Greg as well.  We had a good time, enjoyed each other’s company, smoked some cigars and enjoyed some great times at Steinhatchee.  Next weekend is the Gainesville Offshore Fishing Club tournament, and the Steinhatchee Ladies’ Tournament, which will end the tournament season before the hordes show up for scallops on June 25.

a game of ounces…

Thought I’d post about a few recent trips to keep things up to date. Two weekends ago I had the great challenge of taking old friend and experienced offshore captain Wiley Horton on an inshore trip, and we decided to fish in the Shands Fishing for Kids tournament. Frankly, I have avoided this tournament in the past because I dislike the way the winners are determined. The winning boat is the one with the largest 5-fish trout limit; that would be four fish between 15 and 20 inches, with one more allowed over 20 inches. With 60 boats fishing, that means that almost at a minimum, at least 300 trout were killed and brought in to weigh. I much prefer tournaments with either a single winner by weight, or a tournament that requires the fish to be weighed in alive (as in many redfish tournaments). However, with a change in venue to the Sea Hag Marina, and the fact that it’s for a good cause, I figured I’d give it a try, but in this circumstance I will always keep the fish in a live well in case we decide to release them. Given the fact that Wiley has as much disdain for “trout-snatchers” as I do for “offshore bottom-feeder fishing”, we usually have a great time insulting each other. However, the fact is that Wiley grew up inshore fishing before going to the dark side and fishing in many large offshore tournaments in Florida and the Bahamas over the years. At least he still remembers how to cast a spinning reel. My strategic plan didn’t work too well; we did end up with some nice trout to 19 inches, but never could get the big one we needed to anchor the limit. I did manage to lose one fish near mid-day that would have put us close, but there was a shark in the area and I put a bit too much pressure on the fish and the hook pulled. Wiley got a nice 5 pound redfish and we caught several smaller reds, but it was clear we were not going to win, so we released all the fish on the flats. What I can’t believe is that I neglected to take any pictures on this trip, being in my “tournament intense mode”.  We did have a great time together (which our friends find hard to believe).  The winning team tied for first place with a 12 pound limit, but won the tournament based on their largest fish, a 4 pound 15 oz. fish. The largest redfish was 6 pounds 9 oz. Both of these winning fish were smaller than usual for tournaments this time of  year, probably reflecting the fact that a front had come through the day before and temps dropped dramatically during the night.

The next weekend I fished the Perry Optimist Tournament with Doug Barrett. This tournament always has a lot of large fish, and there were three weigh-in sites, Steinhatchee, Keaton Beach, and Econfina.  Since I knew some cut baiters were fishing (including Jeff Evans and his wife Debbie) I had no great fantasies, but I figured we’d have a good time.  As I could have predicted, for the second straight week, a front came through on Friday and the temps dropped once again. Our strategy worked a little better; we found some nice larger trout in several different locations and several decent redfish, but none over 25 inches. The trout were slightly over 4 pounds on the Boga grip, and the redfish clearly weren’t winners, but as they say, you can never tell, so we kept them in the livewell.

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We got to the weigh-in early, as usual, and weighed in the two largest trout and the redfish. The larger trout was 4.4 pounds, which usually is a very nice fish, but not close to a tournament winner. However, I did get to be in first place for the $2500 prize for a while….

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So we got a beer at the Tiki Bar and settled in to watch the action. Wasn’t long before Bobby Cumbo, a regular Rocky Creek resident,  came up and said “well, I just barely got one bigger than yours”. His was 4.45 pounds. I chuckled and said “well, don’t worry. Neither one of us will win this tournament”. But the longer we waited, and reports started coming in from the other locations, there weren’t any trout weighed in larger than his.  However, we did get a report from Keaton…Debbie Evans had weighed in a big trout at exactly 4.45 pounds as well.  Since the tiebreaker went by earliest time weighed in, Bobby was in first place, and I was in third. The problem was that, as you might expect, one of the scales broke and they had to drive some distance to get another. I was still figuring that certainly someone at Econfina would have a larger trout….but after waiting over an hour to get the weights, their largest trout at that location was….would you like to guess? Yep, 4.45 pounds.  Three trout, all weighing exactly 4.45 pounds, from three different locations. When the dust had cleared,  sure enough, Bobby Cumbo had the winning trout. This was astonishing. I can’t remember a trout winning any major tournament that weighed less than 5 pounds in many years.  I sure wished my trout had eaten a nice 4 ounce pinfish just before taking on my plug, but that’s the way it goes. We had a great time, and I did win a nice cooler for my efforts.  The next day Doug and I decided to take his bay boat a few miles offshore to one of our cobia spots and corraled some live pinfish. There were plenty of cobia, and they were hungry. I had at least six pickups, and got cut off three times. At one point I had a pickup, set the hook, and felt something much smaller than a cobia…here are the before and after pictures of that fish, with the “after” including some crabmeat stuffing.

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We had a great time, and I got a great dinner. All told, we caught some nice fish, but I have to say the fishing is still a little “late” this year. The large schools of whitebait are just showing up, and there are still areas of recovering grass and when there are temperature swings, the fishing will suffer for a day or two. However, things will continue to improve daily as the late spring/summer pattern begins. I’m looking forward to the next big tournament, the Doug Johnson Reeling for Kids tournament, which will be the first weekend in June. Tommy Thompson and I have donated a trip for the past few years, and my boat managed to catch the second largest redfish last year. It’s a huge tournament, with $30,000 in prizes and a raffle for a $70,000 Mirage boat donated by Ken Fickett, and all the moneys benefit the Boys and Girls Clubs of Alachua County, so I’d love to see everyone get involved. Urban Meyer and a bunch of Florida Gator football players will be there, and tentatively I’ll be fishing with Noah Brindise, former Gator quarterback and NFL coach,  again this year. The website for the tournament can be found at:

• http://reelingforkids.com/t_prizeschedule.html         Hope to see you there!

a busy weekend…

Had great trips with two folks this weekend. On Sunday I fished with old friend Richard McDavid, who has been out of action for a while due to severe eye injury. Richard is a long-time member of the Gainesville Offshore Fishing Club and is one of the great barbecuers of all time.  We went out for a trip on Saturday and fished some flats early in the morning with topwater plugs.  We found a good number of slot-sized fish but never could find any large ones.

We caught several limits of keeper trout, all on topwaters and the occasional fish caught on suspending plugs (I was using  a Mirrodine XL, Richard a suspending Bomber).  After the tide came in we ran to several redfish spots and caught some nice fish on the strong incoming tide.

We ended the day with ten keeper trout and many smaller ones, and five redfish.

On Monday I took out Kay Eoff, a retired physicist at UF. Kay suffered a hand injury recently but he assured me he would be able to fish. We left the marina around 9 and fished the same flats as the day before, but slightly further along in the tide. Kay fishes with baitcasters and all day used two lures: a cork and jig rig with an amber tail and a silver Sprite spoon with a single hook on it.  I was fishing a Super Spook Jr. and we both found several really nice trout, with the largest being five pounds, the second largest 4.5. We also caught a number of smaller fish which were released.  As we had our limit of over-20 inch trout, Kay was ready to try some redfish and the water was high enough to run to some of our structure spots. We found a number of redfish around some offshore rock bars; most were small, but we found one six pounder and a five pounder with the smaller fish. By now the tide was flooding and the seabreeze was blowing at least 15 knots so we tried one of the creeks to get out of the wind and strong tidal current, but there was nobody home. Turned out to be a fine day and Kay got some fish to take home.

The grass is still slow in filling in on some of the shallower flats, and pinfish are just starting to show up in good numbers, which will draw the larger fish into some of the shallower areas. I would say we’re about 2 to 3 weeks behind because of the very cold winter that killed back more grass than usual. But things are getting better every weekend.

simplicity is the ultimate sophistication…

That’s what Leonardo da Vinci said. Herbert Hoover said “Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.” Whenever I hear the word “simplicity” I think of one person: Jeff Evans. I’ve known Jeff for about eight years or so. I met him through a friend, Brian Holt, who like Jeff, is a registered nurse. Jeff and Brian worked in the Williston Hospital but Jeff really wanted to fish more, so he and his wife Debbie moved to Steinhatchee. In the time I’ve known him, Jeff, always fishing with Debbie, has won twice as many local tournaments as anyone I can think of. I know of at least three times when I had the lead in a tournament when I saw Jeff’s truck pull up for the weigh-in and I knew I was about to be bounced. In the last two weeks, Jeff and Debbie won the Carabelle Redfish/Trout Shootout, including the first place overall as a team, largest redfish (7.6 lbs.), and largest trout (5.2 lbs.). Yesterday Jeff won the Steinhatchee Community Tournament with a 7.75 lb. redfish and a 6.4 lb. trout, pictured below. These two tournaments provided Jeff and Debbie over $5000 in prize money. In other words, Jeff and Debbie Evans are amazing at finding huge inshore fish.

So….how do they do it? Winning that kind of prize money, they must have high-powered equipment, great electronics and high-end tackle. Nope, not really. Jeff and Debbie fish, and always have, from a canoe. Debbie uses a Zebco reel. From my perspective, the only change I’ve seen in how they fish is that they added a little kicker to their canoe. They access the gulf from primitive ramps that no full-sized boat can use, paddle or power out to the mouth, and usually fish within an easy paddle’s distance from  the creek mouth. And ordinarily they only use one kind of bait….fresh pinfish filets.  They move with the tide and seem to know exactly where the big fish are and how they move.  I consider this amazing. Having expensive tackle and a nice flats skiff, and fishing the same area for about ten years, I have yet to catch a trout as large as the one he caught yesterday. He catches 6 to 7 pound trout on a regular basis.

I remember about three years ago Tommy Thompson and I were fishing with Roland Martin in the Mel Tillis Tournament. I knew where Jeff was going to fish and it just so happened the tides allowed us to get there first. He would have beaten us there,  launching on a small primitive ramp, but on his way to the ramp his trailer went off the road and it took him a while to get it out. As we were fishing on the spot, I saw Jeff and Debbie come out of a nearby creek and paddle out  about a quarter-mile away and drop their anchor, which is an old piece of rusty metal. We fished the area for an hour or so, I caught one nice redfish, and we moved on to catch a Spanish mackeral and a trout that ended up finishing third overall. However, after we left Jeff and Debbie paddled over to our spot, waited patiently and caught the largest and second largest redfish in the tournament (winning much more money than we did) from the same spot.

There’s something wonderfully poetic about a beat-up canoe and a Zebco and a metal chunk for an anchor (which is next to Jeff’s hand in the picture below) whupping up on fancy boats with jack plates and trim tabs and $500 rods and reels.  I am ALWAYS rooting for Jeff  to win (except, of course, if I’m in the tournament).  Jeff also happens to be very soft-spoken, modest and a super-nice guy. Debbie is the more boisterous of the two, usually laughing and the life of the party.  One of the most amazing pair of fishermen I’ve ever known.

back in the saddle again…

The last two weekends have marked the arrival of a consistent spring fishery in the Steinhatchee waters. Fishing with Capt. Tommy Thompson both weekends, we found a great selection of large trout and redfish, in spite of the fact that the grassflats are regrowing slowly after the frigid winter. Areas of rock and grass hold pinfish, crabs and other immature baitfish that attract predators, and some of our usual areas are still lacking in pinfish. In spite of that, going exploring is a great way to keep tabs on the progression of the seagrasses and baitfish.

The trout bite right now is the spring pattern. There are large numbers of keeper-sized trout being taken on cork rigs south of Steinhatchee at the Pepperfish Keys and on the deeper flats in 3 to 8 feet of water. But this is the time of year when larger trout, which are usually solitary and not in schools, move in shallow water in early morning.  Shallow water doesn’t provide as much cover for schools of baitfish, with no excape route downward. Fishing topwater plugs in 2.5 feet of water on two successive weekends, we found a good number of 4.5 to 5 pound fish.

Redfish have also begun their spring antics. While the large schools are still widely scattered, we found several smaller schools of slot-sized fish and a few larger ones, taken on topwaters and on simple jigs with soft tails.

Captain Thompson has begun working on some short videos for a variety of uses, and a brief one about redfish (with an excellent cast)  can be found here:

This is a great time to hit the water. A number of local and regional tournaments are coming up. Take this opportunity to get out in some great weather before it gets too hot to think and the scallop boats are thicker than no see’ums.

brief weekend update…

Been a few weeks since I’ve been on the water. We’ve all been waiting for the water to warm up as things have been pretty inconsistent for the past month. The recent warm spell should have turned them on so there were a variety of attempts planned this weekend.  While the fishing was marginal on Saturday, we did find some bluefish and mackeral and I managed this Spanish on fly.

On Saturday I fished by myself and found, for the first time this spring, a good consistent topwater bite. I caught 6 trout over 4.5 pounds anchored by this 5.5 pounder, which was full of roe. I rarely ever keep fish; this one inhaled a topwater plug so deeply that the lower trebles were hooked around the gill rakers, but the fish wasn’t bleeding. I worked as fast as I could to get the hook out which was not easy, but managed it and put the fish in the livewell for some oxygen. I really didn’t expect her to survive. Amazingly when I got back to the marina she was doing well so she posed for this picture and was put right back in the water.  I’m expecting things to pick up rapidly now; while trout are easily available, redfish have been a little harder to find. That should change within a week or so.

Capt. Tommy Thompson’s Top 20 List: Why you should love fishing

 #20 – No matter how much whiskey you’ve had, you can still fish.

#19 – A limp rod is still useful while fishing.

#18 – You don’t have to hide your fishing magazines.

#17 – It is perfectly acceptable to pay a professional to fish with you once in a while.

#16 – The Ten Commandments don’t say anything against fishing.

#15 – If your partner takes pictures or videotapes of you fishing, you don’t have to worry about them showing up on the Internet if you become famous.

#14 – Your fishing partner doesn’t get upset about people you fished with long ago.

#13 – It’s perfectly respectable to fish with a total stranger.

#12 – When you see a really good fishing person, you don’t have to feel guilty about imagining the two of you fishing together.

#11 – If your regular fishing partner isn’t available, he/she won’t object if you fish with someone else.

#10 – Nobody will ever tell you that you will go blind if you fish by yourself.

#9 – When dealing with a fishing pro, you never have to wonder if they are really an undercover cop.

#8 – You don’t have to go to a sleazy shop in a seedy neighborhood to buy fishing stuff.

#7 – You can have a fishing calendar on your wall at the office, tell fishing jokes, and invite coworkers to fish with you without getting sued for harassment.

#6 – There are no fishing-transmitted diseases.

#5 – If you want to watch fishing on television, you don’t have to subscribe to the Playboy channel.

#4 – Nobody expects you to fish with the same partner for the rest of your life.

#3 – Nobody expects you to give up fishing if your partner loses interest in it.

#2 – You don’t have to be a newlywed to plan a vacation primarily to enjoy your favorite activity.

 And the Number One reason you should love fishing:

#1- Your fishing partner will never say, “Not again?  We just fished last week!  Is fishing all you ever think about?”

So…did I say I really like winter fishing?

It warmed up from last weekend and a front was coming through, and in spite of rain forecast in the morning, I had the itch bad. I met Doug Barrett at the Gulfbreeze ramp and we went out for a little exploration in his bay boat. The rain had just ended when we left around 9 and it stayed dry with scattered clouds the rest of the day. We tried some of our good river spots but the warming trend had pushed most of the trout out of the river.  We ran to another favorite spot. There was no wind, with glassy clear water, so in spite of a water temp of 51 degrees, Doug decided to throw a topwater. He managed to find this nice 5 pounder. Like most big trout this one hit softly and inhaled the topwater with only a slight pop.

We were optimistic but that was the only fish in the area. I fished a Paul Brown Lure, while Doug stayed with the topwater, but nothing else was around.  We ran to another recent spot south of the river with the incoming tide and fished some of the areas of rock grass that held fish a few weeks ago but found nothing. The water temp was rising and was up to 54 degrees and I decided to run a bit further south to a creek I haven’t fished in a while. Like many creeks in our area, there was a large bar across the creek with a cut on one side of the bar that held most of the water flow.  I snuck into the creek from the south and quietly worked into the middle of the creek so we could just reach the north shoreline and cast into the cut. We immediately began catching fish on Paul Brown Lures. There were lots of mullet in the area and we could see them moving through with the tide.  We were catching fish on most every cast, all cookie-cutter fish between 4.5 and 5 pounds.

      

The water temp in the creek was up to 57 degrees and the trout were still biting softly but consistently.  We probably caught about 25 fish and I decided to pull out the fly rod. Unfortunately I only had a four-weight which made casting a bit difficult, but I managed three good fish.  I thought I had a monster at one point when the fish ran out all my loops and onto the reel, but it turned out it was a regular sized fish that I had hooked in the tail. Because of the current it was difficult to get the boat placed properly for fly fishing and trolling motors make fly fishing difficult, but it was great fun and I got some casting practice in. I discovered that a larger fly that suspended worked much better than a faster sinking Clouser.

 

As Doug wanted to keep some fish, we kept about 35 pounds of trout. The real problem was finding fish that were less than 20 inches (you are only allowed to keep one per person over 20 inches).  Randall Hewitt, another Sea Hag guide, had come in with 47 pounds an hour or so before us, and apparently had caught those fish in 2 hours with several people on a charter.   Again, the winter is a great time to fish for trout. It requires some moving around and some knowledge of the area, but this is the only time of the year when you find big trout in large schools.  It was  a really fun day on the water.

up the lazy river…

Well, the trout are in the river at Steinhatchee big-time. For a number of years the trout migration was pretty variable, but in the last few years it’s been pretty predictable. When that happens, the river gets full of people catching fish, which is always a good thing.

  I went out to do a little scouting on Saturday, in what looked to me to be perfect conditions…a warming trend several days after a dramatic cold snap, and also the day before a front. Those things combine to make good fishing highly likely…but you’ve always got to prove it on the field.

I was concerned about the forecast high of almost 70 degrees when I left the Sea Hag Marina at 9 AM. It was overcast with a misty cold and a slight wind, and an air temperature in the high 40′s.  There were boats upriver, and people were catching small keeper trout in various locations, but I wanted to try some of my more usual spots closer to the river mouth. Fishing the river in winter is not hard, but some knowledge about the behavior of trout in cold water helps. In the morning, or on days with bitter cold, the trout are in the river for one reason: it’s deep, and the deeper they can get, the warmer the water is. This is pretty much common sense; if the air is 25 degrees, the water closest to the air is the coldest. There may be a 4 to 10 degree variation in water temperatures between the surface and the bottom in some of the deep holes that populate most Big Bend rivers, especially in areas where the river is spring-fed. In general, the colder it is and the longer it stays that way, the further up-river the fish will travel. And it’s not just trout. Large schools of mullet, redfish and other bottom fish move into the river to join the resident croakers, black drum and sand perch. So the idea is to fish near the channel on cold mornings, using lures that will take you near the bottom.  Jigs or sinking Mirrolures are the standard,  or live shrimp with split shot.  Because the tide goes in and out, there’s current.  When it’s really cold, it’s a good idea to anchor just outside the channel (it’s not a good idea, it’s a necessity; please don’t anchor IN the channel…it pisses people off) and cast upcurrent into or near the channel, letting the lures sink and retrieving them slowly to keep them near the bottom. You almost certainly will lose some tackle, because the deep holes in rivers are populated with rocky bottoms. This is the traditional wisdom of how to fish rivers in our area.

However, we’ve discovered some alternatives. If baitfish move into the shallows, the trout will move with them. And with a warming trend, or in the afternoons, if there’s bright sun, you can count on some of the fish moving out of the channel to feed. On Saturday I noticed some Steinhatchee local experts fishing right along an oyster bar next to the shore catching fish after fish. I was a little surprised, only because it was early in the day. As things warmed  up, I moved to one of my favorite places, a 3 to 4 foot flat about 100 feet outside the channel, and began fishing with Paul Brown Corky lures. The tide was slack, and the sun came out. As the tide started in, I started catching fish. These were fat solid trout in the 18 to 21 inch size. The warmer it got, the more consistent the bite. There were boats within 100 feet of me and they were fishing corks and jigs, and catching nothing. I could see them getting irritated. At one point I literally caught 18 trout on 18 consecutive casts. When these schools get in a position that is comfortable, they stay there, unlike in the channel, where the schools move through regularly.  As one friend noted, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.  I finally decided that if they were this easy to catch, I’d give it a try with the 8 weight fly rod I keep stored under my seat. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that when someone stole my tackle box a few months ago, they also took my flies and I had none in the boat. So feeling all McGyver-ish, I rigged something up. I took a small offset worm hook and tore a little piece of a swirl-tail plastic body and rigged it up.  As you can see, it was hardly a thing of beauty.

But the nice thing is that it worked. I’m not the greatest caster, but I managed to get about 40 feet or so, which was all I needed. I ended up catching 10 trout on that fly, which is the best day I’ve ever had with a fly rod.

It ended up to be a very warm sunny afternoon so I ran out of the channel to some of my other winter spots, but there was nobody home. As the warming trend continues, trout will move out of the river into other shallow areas and school. Their absence suggested that the water was still too cold, and with a huge front coming through the next day, with future temps in the teens, it will put them in the river for some time.

There are good and bad things about fishing in the river. On the bad side, it’s usually pretty damn cold. And people sometimes lose any inhibitions about courtesy; if you are catching fish, don’t be surprised if someone comes and anchors right next to you. A hard stare helps sometimes, but not always. But on the good side, if you’re patient and move around, and wait for the right conditions, you can catch a lot of fish in a short time, and that makes it a great time to take your kids fishing. Just make sure they are well-layered and take some hot chocolate in the thermos.  And maybe a battery-powered video game to be safe.

Getting there…

While the fall has been steadily improving, many of us were convinced it was slower than usual. This has been the slowest October in several years for redfish. This is the time of year that the larger fish school to get ready for their move offshore, never to return to shallow water. While we have caught fish regularly, the large schools have been more scattered than usual. While this has persisted somewhat, within the past two weeks things have improved considerably.  We even got in a quick offshore trip that was hindered by the usual problems when people go outside of their element, as well documented by Capt. Thompson in his weekly online blog post from Florida Sportsman (it was all his fault….http://www.floridasportsman.com/4cast/bb/index.html ).   We did come away with one nice kingfish…came within a hair of getting spooled, this fish took a pinfish on a spinning reel with a stinger rig. Doug Barrett, whose boat we were using, came even closer. I could see the metal spool before his fish stopped…but the hook pulled shortly after.

In general, we’ve been doing pretty well. The day before the offshore adventure, Doug Barrett and I found some nice redfish in shallow water and some excellent trout fishing. Interestingly, most of the fish were caught on suspending lures.

 

This weekend there were several events going on….the Big Bend Bash, put on by the Big Bend Sportsman Forums, and the fall tournament of the Gainesville Offshore Fishing Club. Because of some forecasted winds, the tournament was cancelled. Naturally, the weather was beautiful all weekend, and we predict the make-up date on November 6 will be worse…because that’s what always happens.  We fished the early morning extreme low in close to shore and found a great trout topwater bite. I caught approximately 30 trout, all on topwater plugs, and most were chunky 18 to 20 inch fish. We also found this nice 7 pound redfish, taken on a suspending Catch 2000 and another oversize 10 pounder that avoided a picture.

 

On Sunday, because the trout bite the day before had been so excellent, we decided to try and catch some trout on fly, in spite of the windy forecast.  We managed four trout in spite of marginal conditions….and I also found THE clouser pattern for lizardfish, scoring four of the highly sought after gamefish.  Unfortunately we couldn’t get any pictures of them, but I am confident they are tippet records.

I must apologize for posting all the pictures of this ugly mug….that’s the way it is when you catch all the fish. Now that the weather’s improved, along with the light-tackle fishing, I’ll be posting more regularly with pics of others.