PSJ...RTSO

[SHOWBOAT]

My in-laws have been staying at CSB for the past couple weeks and giving me good reports on both reds and trout. Not having a tourney partner and knowing the safe SJB waters well, I decided go hang out with the Sherron family Friday night and fish SJB for the tourney. Saturday morning I ran to an area that usually holds big reds until the boat traffic picks up. Sure enough it did and they were slaming mullet everywhere. I caught 5 reds before 9:00, unfortunatley all were 29-32' long. After that bite died I went in search of trout. I played throughout the day throwing about every topwater plug I own. I caught probably 100 trout with the largest being a marginal fish between 20 and 21." Not having a red and a marginal trout, I decided to have a round and hang out on the beach rather than returning for weigh-in. Congrats Casey and Pat on fine tourney stringer.

If you have never fished SJB or never had success with topwaters, then I recommend coming to the next NFGFC tourney. In my 10 years of fishing SJB, I've never seen more trout there and willing to eat anything you can make flail on the surface.

Saturday night we launched with a gig in hopes of finding some flounder. Apparantely I'm missing some crucial info on that game b/c we drifted over sandbars from a couple inches of water to about 3.5.' That was about as deep as we could go and still see bottom clearly as we didn't have the best gigging lights. We never saw a flounder in the 3 hours we drifted. The stars were out in full force though and good time was had by all. Any tips from successful flounder giggers would be appreciated.

[BayGator]

Brian get up with me next time you are down and we will hit the flounder up at night. Good job on finding the reds, I have found them to be non existent the last few times I have fished.

[TroutTrent]

Thats Great news Brian, I was thinking about going down this weekend and was hoping the trout bite was on. Sounds like it was on fire for you

[IGIG2]

Showboat did ya'll go when the tide was moving? Me and my family were down last week wed and thurs gigged several kids really enjoyed it. Got most when tide was coming in, hard to get out of the wind if its blowing there. Hope ya have better luck next time

[caseycook]

Sweet. I'm ready for June 12th! Thanks for the update, Brian.

[SHOWBOAT]

IGIG, I didn't really look at tides, as that trip was a "go when you can" type decision. We left Barrier Dunes around 11 Saturday night and returned around 3. We launched from Eagle Harbor and scoured bars from just north of Pig Island to a little less than a mile north of Eagle Harbor. We never saw a flounder. Ladies, sharks and rays were there in #s. I imagine we would have done better in the south side of the bay, but the team wasn't game for the run.

Thanks for the info on tides. I'm looking forward to refining my skills; katie makes one hell of stuffed flounder.

[IGIG2]

We were staying at the park launched at eagle harbor as well there were 2 little ones on the ramp. Ya'll did see any on the bar to the left because there was a pile of little ones 4 to 8 inchers there picked one keeper there as well. Seen alot of sharks,ladies, and rays too, kids really liked seeing all the different kinds of sea life. Wanted to make it near blacks island but never made it but we covered a lot of water that is big area. What kinda light set-up are you running?

2 in the ridges

[SHOWBOAT]

great pics; thanks for sharing. It gives me an idea of what I should have seen, and makes me want to try again really soon.

I think lighting was our issue, even though I thought I was seeing bottom pretty clearly at the time. We were relying on D-cell Maglights and a hand held Q-beam. I'm going to invest in some better lighting and try again the weekend of the NFGFC tourney.