Thanks for the previous post from Luke(econfina 03/19) and the great pictures he took… we may not be able to match the stories coming out of Keaton this weekend,
but we gave it our best shot any way! Luke Newman (Atticus), Carl Vinson (non member..so far), and Sir Reel made up the "lets take Friday Off" team and headed out of the Econfina at low tide around 7:45. Water was the lowest I've ever seen or attempted to go out but made it with no significant problem other than the time it took idling most of the way. 
Had to keep it trimmed up for quite a ways even after passing the tripod. 
We decided to troll since we couldn't make any speed, so we put out a spoon and a red and silver spook. We had one strike on the spook but what ever it was didn't stick. We trolled around the bird rack and then headed for Rock Island. Nothing seemed to be out that way, so we heading in to see if we could find some of the creek mouths that Chalk had put us on to. We ended up at Pitts Creek and after going quite a ways back up the creek we came out and started fishing back towards the Econfina. We tried a few plugs but the Cajun Thunder proved to be the most productive. Carl seemed to be having the best luck and caught a couple of really nice fish, with one well over 20 inches. Carl stuck with a candy corn and about 18 to 20 inches of leader. Luke started picking up some nice fish later in the day and made the best discovery. 
Luke figured out that if we followed a line of crab trap buoys that were probably 150 yards off the grass line and 4 foot of water we had the zone for the good fish. Any closer and nothing but catfish. Any further out and lots of shorts. We ended up the day with 10 keeper trout and 2 Spanish Mack. Conservative estimates at 30 to 35 shorts released along with 3 cats. I have to say that a captain couldn't ask for a better crew. They worked together beautifully. I want to thank both of them for a great trip! Carl with a nice over 20 incher
Luke with one of his crab buoy trout
the team photo
03/20/04
Well since my wife couldn't take Friday off.... I was allowed to go on Friday... only if I took her out on Saturday.
We waited until about 9:30 this time to give the tide some time to start coming back in. We got to the river and there was a line of about 12 to 15 boats waiting for enough water to put in. We finally got on the water around 10:30. Same story as the day before with respect to getting out of the river (with the exception of hanging a 6' piece of crab trap rope that was just drift'n along under the surface 
). We headed back towards the Hickory Mound area to see if we could find some of the same fish that were there on Friday.We didn't find them in exactly the same spots, but had good success with drifting from the 4 ft depth into about 3ft. Overall, the conditions were absolutely perfect...even better than Friday.
I could see a ton of boats further out and there were several working the grass line in close, but we seem to have the best luck off the grass in the 4 to 3 ft range. My wife did really well using the candy corn and also the "sprayed roach" that Capt Pat blessed us with. I used a bone diamond sea shad and never changed because it produced for most of the day and accounted for all my trout including the 22 incher. We ended the day with 8 very nice trout and 2 silver trout. One note.... Capt Pat mentioned Thursday evening at the meeting, that all of the trout he had cleaned recently had empty stomachs. I can sure reinforce that finding. All the trout I cleaned this weekend were absolutely void of anything in their stomachs. Sir reel and his lovely assistant
