Steinhatchee report 4/6/18 Wow!

[zload]

The Hooked on Heroes event was cancelled yesterday due to weather forecast for Saturday so when I checked in with my buddy he said “lets go tonight and fish Friday”.

This morning started out cool with a light breeze, went north and things were just dead a couple of shorts and 1 keeper.

Headed south around 11 and started in about 5’, landed 3 keeper flounder pitching a soft plastic jerk bait into large sand patches and slow rolling it just above the bottom.

We moved back north a bit around noon and man it was on. Between my buddy and I we must have boated at least 100 trout, most in the slot a few just barely under. I was using a gold flake soft jerk bait with chartreuse tail until I ran out of them, then switched to white/chartreuse tail didn’t seem to make a difference to the fish. My buddy was using a suspending gold hard plug. We were about even catch wise. Most fish were in the 3’ - 4’ depths.

Initially we were moving the baits slow, typical twitch twitch then letting them settle but when the bite really kicked I was dragging it fast and they were slamming it. Water temps were around 70 at noon.

My buddy caught a short cobia, we both caught a couple of ladyfish but it was trout day for sure. He ended the day with an almost 20” trout and most of the ones we kept were 17” -19” and fat. Saw what appeared to be a “white” shark, not jaws but very very light colored, could see him swimming from a good distance away and got close once to verify it was a shark. Pretty cool.

FWC lady at the ramp doing a survey, said she had some good reports from several anglers but not what we reported. She weighed and measured our catch as well as recording total catch and other species.

Sometimes everything lines up and today was one of those days for us. One other boat was right with us on the drift and they were catching plenty too. Kids on that boat were squealing and laughing at every trout.

Water was starting to get a little sporty on the ride in, tomorrow will be a good day to stay home if the forecast is close to correct.

[DixieReb]

Sounds great! Fish always seem to bite good right before a big rain.

[silverking]

Way to get after 'em zload!

[Salty Gator]

Nice

[Juan]

Great report! Hopefully they'll bite like that "after" a big rain too. I'll be going Wednesday.

[fishfalcon]

Well done. I fished that day and managed one legal trout, 2 shorts, 2 white trout, and a bunch of sailcats and a Spaniard.