WINDY Tuesday on St Joe Bay -April 9th

[Rhettley]

Me and a good friend who owns Cape Trading Post managed to time a trip together to the bay. As usual the wind was howling. We drifted the flats with the anchor out. Did I mention the wind was blowing?

It was a much needed trip for me to get out on the salt water so I didn't care if I caught nothing but lady fish. We managed about 6 or 7 trout that were all between 15 and 16" so they went back in and I lost a very nice trout. John managed to catch a very nice flounder off a sand patch. It was too windy to get out towards the north end of the bay and troll for Spanish. I did go back that evening and fished the wall by the marina for a few minutes and missed two and lost one nice spanish. A guy down the wall caught a few pretty nice ones so they are moving in. The water over the darker weedy areas was 70 degrees and dropped 3 or 4 degrees over the light areas. The mullet and pinfish are on the flats. We fished a variety of lures and never really found any one that paid off.

Like I think I mentioned, it was WINDY!!! It's supposed to be windy all week so if you go to St Joe be careful.

[fireant21]

Played hookey in St Joe bay as well yesterday. Similar results with three decent keepers, but tons of shorts. Another week of warm weather and it will be on. Nothing like drifting over a mile per hour with my oversize drift sock out. It beats working though. Glad you got to go.

[blind9]

Was there on Saturday n couldn't really find the fish only caught few flounder. Tried every gulp color with n without corks. What were u useing? I wondered if maybe the long tide change had that much affect on the tough bite????

[tabb]

Glad to see John taking some time off to fish. Everytime I go down there he says all he does is work.
Good report. We will be down there next week so hope the spanish turn it on.

[Rhettley]

Blind9 we threw about everything in the box at them and never found anything they prefered. We tried Gulps, flukes both weighted and unweighted, topwater, Z Man shrimp and padlers, mirror lures, jerk baits, etc. We tried colors from natural to new penny to nuclear chicken.
The one color I can say that seemed to work was the guy on the wall behind the marina just before dark that caught a mess of spanish. He had a double rig that was bright chartreuse. I couldn't see exactly what it was but I'd guess one of those tube rigs.

[blind9]

Well that does help my feelings to hear that. I was kinda bummed out after Saturday but u know the best is yet to come. Just never had quite that bad a day. Thanks for the info. Bad day on water always better than the time clock!!!!