Spring Creek on Veteran's Day!
Posted: November 13th, 2007, 10:30 am
TallyFly & I headed out around 9 a.m. yesterday using his boat, accompanied by another party, Gene & his son, Mark, in their boat, for a day's fishing in the Spring Creek area. The tide was way low and still going out when we arrived at the landing, the air temp was around 50's and the surface temp in low 60's. We had plenty of live shrimp (from Jerry's B&T) and some Mud Minnows, thanks to my son Tommy's cast netting for bait the day before. Gerald brought his fly rod along, while the rest of us played with the conventional tackle.Our first stop was up the river, around some creek mouths, that produced a few short trout for us and a nice flounder for Gene's boat, caught on live shrimp & hair jigs. Beware - the darn bottom has lots of obstructions, so bring lots of jigs as you will loose a few. The best method was to throw either popping corks or rattle corks with shrimp/minnows into the drop off areas along the creek mouths, usually 5 foot depth at low tide.
Next, as the tide started coming back in around 11:30 a.m. we made a stop in the boils next to the landing. Gerald & I wore our arms out catching ladyfish and Mango Snapper on jigs, artificial lures, shrimp, minnows, and Gerald's fly rod. I gave Gerald a newly tied Clouser fly creation of mine called "Sparkle Lips", that he used to pulverize the hungry snapper and ladyfish. Unfortunately, the snapper were all too short to keep (too bad, because they are very tasty). We called Gene & son over to us so they could get in on the excitment, too.
Around 3:30 p.m., Gerald took us through the "cut off" creek, that leads over into the bay filled with oyster bars, when the tide was peeking towards high, and we stumbled upon some redfish. Actually, Gene & Mark had found a school of tailing redfish and I called them on the radio to see what they were doing only to find out that they were catching redfish. Gerald caught two keeper reds (22-24") on shrimp & Rattle cork behind an oyster bar where they began stacking up chasing small mullet. Then, he began fly fishing while I stayed on the bait and caught two small ones closer towards sundown as the tide began to fall out again. That ended our day at Spring Creek because we sure didn't want to get caught in the shallow creek and spend the night out there!
For those of you who have not tried this place out, I highly recommend it. The landing facility is in good shape and parking is quite adequate. There is a $5.00 launch fee, which is very reasonable. The diversity of places to fish is unbelievable and all methods of tackle seems to work, including the fly rod.
Next time I'm bringing my five-weight outfit and give those little Mango snapper a fit with it! Besides, the sheepshead should move into the boils soon, as well as the trout and reds, especially when the water temp drops down next month.
What "fishing hole" would that be, Jeff? We found a lot of holes...unless you mean the boils! Should not be a problem, we left them biting. 
By the way, for you Kayak and tiny boating folks, what a nice area to get around in: it is well protected from the winds, those crazy boat drivers who make huge waves when they pass by you are not around, lots of small creeks to explore and fish, as well as tons of oyster bars in shallow water - just made for the small crafts! 