I was so excited about getting to go fishing agian I couldn't sleep so I turned on the debate and you guessed it
We started out around 8:00 this morning looking for some trout and reds. We looked and looked and fished and fished to very little avail. The stocks for next year look good as we caught a good many 12"-14" trout. The rock bass population looks to be doing just fine as well. There should also be plenty of pinfish for the next several years as we saw schools everywhere.Around 11:00 we decided to run offshore a little bit and see if we could find some grouper, rock bass or even pink mouth grunts. Well we found the grunts and a few keeper rock bass
. We spent a couple of hours catching grunts and imposed a 10" min lenght to keep it interesting. We loaded the boat (almost) with probably 10-15 and got 4-5 rock bass up to about 15". 
We ran out of cut bait and Dad starting using New Penny GULP!. The grunts loved it. My mother-in-law loves them so I might get in her good graces. 
2:00 rolled around and we started trout fishing again. We started in about 6' of stained water just east of Rock Island. Dad was dragging a CT behind the boat and hooked a 17" trout. We decided to move in a little shallower and troll around some bars Barhopr and I found/fished this past June, I hadn't been there since then. I boated a 21" trout on a Catch 5
and Dad hooked a couple of short rock bass. We drifted to another bar and right off the bat I boated a 20" or so trout on the same Catch 5 . I tried top water for a while but got no love.
We called it a day at 4:00 and headed in for the long ride home. I had a great time on the water with Dad and we got a few fish for the freezer. Only issue of the day was a Penn 360 reel I've had for a couple of months just came apart in my hand in the middle of a cast
. Guess I'll have to go see Heath. 
I left the dig. camera at home so I'll get some pre-cleaning pics in the morning.
Thanks for reading.
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