After dragging out my dad’s old johnboat and outboard I finally got out on to the water Saturday and tried my luck at catching some fish. With an early wake up, my friend, Nate and I headed out to the little beach access at the foot of the Gandy bridge. It was a nice morning to get my first real crack at the challenging world of flats fishing.
With an incoming tide we felt that our chances to tangle with some fish were fairly decent. As we launched the crude twelve foot johnboat we decided to get some live bait and start off trying for the snook. After a few throws of the cast net we had some nice sized pinfish, that we thought would be perfect to entice a fat snook from his home within the mangroves. However, after pitching those beautiful pinfish under some mangroves for an hour and a half we had nothing to show for it. Whether the presentation was off or they just weren’t there we decided to abandon the snook and try for the elusive redfish.
From the previous post I had mentioned that redfish like to roam the flats that have ample access to cover or deeper water. Aimed with that information we found an area that was averaging three to five feet in depth and was in close proximity to a channel the led into the power plant that is nearby. Again like the snook, the redfish seem to be either absent or cleverly eluding our well sharpened hooks. However unlike the snook experience, we did catch a few ladyfish and a small trout. Thus, making the bottom bouncing method, that was introduced last post, the most productive technique of the day up to that point.
With goose eggs showing for snook and redfish I decided that trout would have to save the day. We had high hopes for the trout being we had caught a small one by accident when fishing for redfish. With elusions of monster trout wandering the flats we determined that the topwater plugs were the way to go, as stated by John Donohue in his article Fishing For Speckled Trout in Winter Months. We wanted to make up for striking out on the other two species in a spectacular fashion. This unfortunately would not be the day that this would happen. Cast after cast with those big topwater plugs yielded nothing but a tight muscles and sore arms. Exhausting all the methods that I had previously posted were the go to strategies for catching these fish I began to experiment on my own.
I had received DOA shrimp, an imitation soft plastic shrimp jig, as a gift a couple of years ago and made the decision to give them a whirl. I concluded that the bottom was not the place to be nor was the top, so I began fishing the middle of the water column. No sooner than the third cast I had a trout fighting at the end of my line. With this discovery Nate also began to use the shrimp jigs at the same depth and produced hit after hit as well. We ended our day of fishing with eleven trout, a couple of ladyfish and a blacktip shark.
While this fishing trip yielded less than satisfactory results with the methods that were being tested I still feel that they are very productive techniques. Fishing is not an exact science what works one day may not work the next. Whether it’s because the fish are not there, they have already fed, or any of the other numerous reasons that fish don’t bite, successful fishing strategies changes from day to day. The only thing I had proven Saturday was that those three techniques did not work that day and that a successful angler must be ready to adapt to the given situation.
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