straight to ol standby honey hole spot number 1 on a beautiful 75 degree afternoon and zero wind with tide ripping in and things were looking up. fished all the way up and back and nothing. no sooner had i gotten out of my mouth "we need a breeze to put a little ripple on this super clear water" when we got our breeze. bam, 23 inches of fatty trout in the box. we caught for about 45 minutes losing many at the boat because of hooks falling out as they were all very nice trout and their mouths would just get a little too big of a hole in them from pulling so hard. we ended up with 6 in the box and lost another 4 or 5 at the boat. all were keepers with no throwbacks. off to redfish spot during slack tide and about half down the bank and BAM, 25 inches of red in the box. ended up with 5 reds and all were keepers. that slight breeze had cranked up to about 20 and it was starting to get a little dark, so we headed in. trout were in less than 2 feet and reds were all along the grass and on top of bars. white and herring colored jerkbaits were the bait of choice.
saturday saw much of the same as weather goes. unfortunately, the wind never quit and to add to the low morning tides were the clouds and dark conditions taking away the sight fishing. so off to JR's we go for shrimp. these guys aren't big fisherman and i knew 20 mph winds would make it tough. it was a good choice as we had a great day catching fish. 6 black drum, close to 20 reds with 5 keepers, and 11 trout all on one bar in about 2.5 hours made it worth it. wind cranking to somewhere over 20, dark conditions and we were gone. i had never caught black drum at econfina before, but we worked on them on saturday.
First two days catch
Sunday was a lot of the same with a super low tide at noon on Sunday and a long idle out to the mouth of the river. winds getting up to cautionary levels for sunday, but fortunately out of the northeast made it manageable. and to make it even better, two very good rain showers late in the afternoon. this time it took two bars over about 3 hours, but we managed 11 more trout and around 10 reds with only one keeper. again in 1-2 feet of water all on shrimp. Sunday was probably the toughest day I have ever fished econfina. the dark light conditionas was tough and the water had cooled. this made the fish bite very light. they would barely hit the bait and then the cork would slowly go down. you would think it was a pin fish it was so light at times.
My buddy holding up Sunday's catch inlcuding a 25 inch fatty trout
econfina always produces fish, but these were the toughest i have ever had to work for. i have never been down this early as i usually try and make it to the keys this time of year and start hitting the panhandle in late march or early april. but we made the best of it and a 15 year old and his dad who had never been to the panhandle had a great time. And that is all that matters!!!!!
