Unreal. I never imagined that a day I’d never forget would be one that I had to fish hard for 7 hours before I caught the first fish. I only finished with only 4 trout and the biggest at about 19”.
Started at 9:00am & it was cold. Very little water and not much movement all day. I figured that if the clouds cleared then the lack of water movement could really help with warming and isolating fish in the afternoon. The thermometer read 10 degrees C. That’s brutal cold. I actually questioned the accuracy but that temp was confirmed by checking on-line sites later.
At about 11:30 my fishing buddy was wading and saw 15-20 trout moving in a school in about a foot of water.
He caught 4 of those & they were all in the 20-23” range.
By the time I got there it was over. Nada for me but things were looking up.
He mentioned to me that a few times in prior years he had seen schools of trout in the winter and that they seemed to assemble by size. He asked if I’d ever seen it and I said no. I’ve seen pods of fish but not what I would call a school.
At about one oclock I’m walking shin deep down the lee-wind side of a bar with a gulp baited spinning rod and the fly rod set up with a chartreuse clouser. I’d just polished my Maui Jims and then I see it, a group of fish swimming along the bar straight towards me. I knew one move would spook em so I just stood there.
My first thought was redfish because of how big they were.
Nope. Trout. Big (BIG) trout.
They just kept coming and seemed oblivious, swimming within 1 foot of my feet. When they got that close they spooked and startled a few others. But then they just keep coming.
I wanted to cast but for the moment it seemed futile. I just kept still and tried to measure what I was seeing.
All of the fish looked over 20” and some were a lot bigger.
I would guess the total number to have been a little over 100 fish. Unreal. All BIG trout.
After what looked like the last fish passed I cast the jig once and had no takers.
Then I hightailed it up the bar to see if I could get a better shot.
I caught up to the fish and they didn’t even give the gulp a look. Three tries & all ignored.
I saw those fish 3 more times over the next hour and never caught one.
Over the next few hours my buddy picked up a few stray 16’s but I’m still skunk skunk skunked.
By now it’s four o’clock and I'm still believing this giant school of giants is going to wake up and make my day.
Meanwhile, I’ve had plenty of time to review what the book says should work in these conditions.
Plenty of sun. Not much moving water. Shallow over dark bottom.
Fine. But that’s not where I saw those fish.
It worked though. At least for a bit of redemption. Four trout. 16-19”.
No skunk.
Visions in my head forever of a giant school of giant trout.
Quite an education.
A couple cold weather notes. The temp did put a hurting on marine critters.
Benthic snails belly up, Sea Stars dead, Cow Fish and annelid worms frozen dead.
Even a frozen Pinfish. 10c is cold.
That said. I don’t think we’ll find many trout deep in the creeks this year.
I think that with the slow change in water temp this winter they were able to acclimate gradually.
And, with all this talk about the "state" of big trout, I'm thinking that what I saw says
they're doing ok around Hickory Mounds.
_______________
...Me and Tincan saw some schools of trout at St. Marks last winter, I can't imagine seeing 100 though 
