We got to the ramp about 7:00 am and launced on a LOW tide. After my incident last week with ruining my new stainless prop, I said I would never do the Econfina again on a low tide. That lasted all of 1 week! I just slapped on the old aluminum "flats prop" and hoped for the best.
We got out to the mouth of the river about 7:30 and decided to trim up the motor and drift. There were already 2 boats stuck in the sand on the west side of the mouth marker. The wind was blowing about 5-7 out of the NE. We drifted about 30 minutes with no action using Equalizers and various SWA's, DOA's and other grubs. I decided to try a finger mullet fished under a CT. I caught a few shorts off the mullet, but the action was too slow for our liking. Once we were in 3-4 ft of water, I fired up the motor and we headed out to deeper water. We headed due south about 1 mile.
Once we were in 4-5 ft of water we started to drift again. I continued to use the finger mullet and SWA's. I caught a few keeper trout off the mullet and the action began to pick up on the SWA's around 8:30. Out of nowhere, the rig with the finger mullet began to scream!
After 5 minutes or so, I boated the culprit. A 23" blue with a major attitude 
. I decided to catch a few pinfish a try livebait. I caught a few pins that were 2-3". PERFECT 
. My buddy hooked one on under a CT and tossed it out. The CT never came up. After 20 seconds or so, I said "You best check that thing." He took in the slack, set the hook and held on! It was a 23 1/2" trout. Thick too. Almost immediately I had one on too. A 22" trout. It hit a live pinfish also. We decided to put up the SWA's and go strictly live. The fish hit well for about 2 hours preferring the pins. When the bite slowed down, we decided to move. We headed out to the bird racks till we were in 10 ft of water. We switched over to green split curly tails with a 3/8 red head. The fish started hitting them immediately. We caught 3 keeper trout, about 10 shorts and 6 rock bass. I lost a huge spanish right at the back of the boat. It hit about 10 ft off the boat. I let the grub fall again and it got right back on
!! Unfortunately, I did not suceed in boating it. It was approximately 25-28". Oh well. The only action we got on the pinfish were sharks. We decided to head in around 2:30. We stopped at one more spot just in sight of river marker. I had just shut the motor off when my buddy already had a nice trout on. I tossed my line out and one hit immediately. We continued using the green split tails. We had our limit of trout, but continued fishing just for sport. We caught 5 or so more trout and then decided to head on in.....on a HIGH tide
. TOTAL FOR THE DAY: 10 TROUT, 2 NICE BLUES, 6 ROCK BASS AND 2 WHITING. We boated about 40 trout for the day and got broke off 5 times!!! All in all it was a great day on the water and we even got a little sun there at the end. We made it out and in with no contact with rocks or sand bars
. Next week, we'll try for the groupas again.....weather permitting.
Its just a matter of never taking the Econ for granted. You didn't by chance get the numbers on that piling did you?