Skeeter and I left the ramp at about 6:15 am, armed with an assortment of shrimp, pinfish, and all of our hard and softbaits, as well as some freshwater shiner minnows that Skeeter had left over from using on the bass pond (more about that later).
Motored out to one of my favorite spots, bam, 1st 6 casts for both of us, 6 trout each. Most was shorts. Since it looked like it was going to be a great day, we decided only to keep only 18" and above.
Water was calm, N-NNE winds, rising tide, 6 foot of water. The bite dropped off the shrimp, had a lot of swirls on topwater, no real bites. Decided to try the freshwater shiner minnows. Bam! 20 incher in the boat! Next cast shiner minnow... Bam 19 incher in the boat! Ok, you get the picture. Fish was after the live bait. Skeeter kept me in pinfish. Within about 2 hours had 1/2 our limit, mostly 19 and 20's.
First highlight of the day, we both doubled up on 2 reel screemers, 1 on shrimp, and 1 on pinfish. Both reels were screaming at the same time! Turned out to be 2, 3' reef sharks! What a blast.
Moved on to fill out our limit so I could have some fresh fish to take with me on the new assignment.
Continue to throw everything in the tacklebox, but live pinfish was the big hiter.
Around 1pm, Skeeter nailed a 24" trout that rounded out the limit.
Final highlight of my day was within 5 minutes of planning to leave, tossed out one of the last shrimp, water was a bit more choppy, Bam!! thought I had a huge redfish, got it to the boat, turned out to be a 26" trout. My biggest trout ever over the past 14 months that I've lived here and fished in saltwater!
What a memorable day. To say the least, I culled one of the smaller ones.Here is a photo of the day's catch!
Grand total for the day
9 - good keeper trout 18 - 20 (1-24, 1-26)
30+ shorts and 18 and less
3 - good spannies
seveal spannies throwbacks
5 or so sharks 2 - 3 ft
numerous cat fish, lady fish, etc...
Almost forgot, we had what looked like a 6 foot Tarpon roll and jump about 10 yards from the boat.
All things said, the fish Gods smiled upon us today! I'm sure gonna miss this over the next 6 weeks.
Dale Hollow
