New moon, extremely low tide, I had to go redfishing no matter what. Matt Claps (future brother in law) and I arrived at the Aucilla ramp at 10:00am and dropped the boat in what little bit of water there was. Weaving through the trout boats, which were already thick in the river, we headed to the mouth. If it wasn't for the go-devil and a shallow draft we would have never made it out. First stop, several miles east from the mouth we stopped on grass in about 8" of water and started to pole towards shore. It was sunny, slick calm, crystal clear (the water)and about 60 degrees. It didn't take long before we saw our first redfish. We spooked several before catching our first on a gold spoon. We could see the 25" red turn on the spoon and come after it with full steam. It looked like a torpedo coming through the water. We chased reds for about an hour and caught a few until the wind started to chop up the water making it hard to see. The tide was up enough so we made our way into one of the numerous marsh creeks that line the coast. We hit several spots with no luck before we anchored up on a sure thing. Using live shrimp it was only a minute before the first strike, then the second. We were all grins as we fought two respectable reds to the boat. The bigger of the two was 26" and 8 pounds, the smaller 25" & 6 pounds. We had already kept an earlier fish so we kept the larger one and released one for times to come. Over the next hour the action was non-stop with all but one fish in the slot and several at the upper end. As the tide quite so did the bite. We hit a few more spots with no luck and decided it was time to call it a day. We were all smiles on the way in as we weaved our way back through the fifty or so boats still fishing in the river.
Capt. Dave
1/13/02 Fishing Report from Forgotten Coast Charters
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