I really have to get me a digital camera. i keep posting these reports and you guys are going to quit believing me. i thought the new scanner that came with our new printer would be color and it is not. scanned the pictures and they are black and white. oh well. anyway, here's the report.
the general consensus from the reports i have read and from all the people i spoke with at the ramp is that the shorts stole the show for the weekend. tons of fish being caught, but 6 to 10 keepers out of 150 fish or so caught isn't exactly a great keeper/catch ratio. however it is a great time to fellowship with friends. the redfish action was great for the big econ however, and that is what i love.
Friday 4/8
fished from 12 til 6. headed SE toward rock island and caught many many short trout and 4 keeper trout on corks and cady corn grubs. fish were biting everywhere, but we never could find a good school of keeper fish. wind got up so headed in to redfish. only fished for about 2 hours and had our three keepers 21" and twin 23" and 8 or 9 misses using a the new in line spinnerbait. it is just a little big and with it rigged weedless, it is hard to get the hook in. the wind was blowing a gail and the waves were 3-4 feet up on the shore and it really triggered the bite for the reds.
saturday we fished all day. we fished before and past rock island catching fish all the way, however much slower than friday. found a great hole on the other side of rock island and had 5 keeper trout pretty quick and then we lost the school. never could find them again. there must have been 20-25 boats all podded up as we continued working east. thought we would see what all the commotion was about and it was just a HUGE school of short trout. we caught them about 10 minutes and left still trying to find bigger fish. never did. went in to redfish and had a keeper and a rat. then as we were getting to the spot i have been catching the majority of the reds, we had to help out a stranded boater. so that was the end of the redfishing. did get back out for a few more hours on the trout and a lot more shorts, 2 more keeper trout and a nice spanish. caught fish today on jerkbaits and candy corn grubs under corks.
sunday was BAD. we couldn't even get any short trout. we caught a nice flounder and two short trout all morning. it was the worst i have ever seen econfina. tons of boats in the afternoon so after we fished everywhere we knew to fish to get a trout we head back west around aucilla to redfish. man the water was dark. you couldn't see your lure an inch under the surface it was so muddy.
managed one 24" redfish that was just beautiful. very dark. then it was time to head back to athens.
Econfina Weekend Report
Moderators: bman, Chalk, Tom Keels
Sounds like yall really got into them. Candycorn is the favorite color now. We caught some on it last week.
koenig
the trick to redfish is use anything with a spinner on it such as spinnerbaits or in-line spinner baits. put a saltwater assassin grub in candy corn, electric chicken or black/chartreuse on the bait and work it very slow out of the grass. the key is to fish the last 1.5 - 2 hours of the incoming and all the outgoing tide. unlike other places along the panhandle, the redfish are up in the grass and not very often on the oyster bars. good luck.
volguy, you did an outstanding job of fishing the location and time you had available. Great job and the report was excellent. Because of the tournament activity levels around the Saint Marks area, I was fishing out of the Econfina on Saturday also. My three boys and I didn't get a very early start, probably got on the water around 10:30-11am. As I'm sure you noticed, the water in the river was high and rip'n (even at low tide). We traveled West out of the river and got on the South side of a fairly large pack of boats that were drifting in a Easterly direction. I caught a 19incher right away but we never really got into a good bite all day. We tried that for a while then moved in closer and sort of positioned our selves in the middle of the pack but didn't have much better luck. We tried in closer with no success. I took us East to probably half way to rock island and we drifted from 10-11 foot depth into probably 4-5 with no bites. Left the water around 5pm. I'm thinking that you may have been closer to Rock Island than we were. You certainly had better success than we did. For the day, we only managed to bring 3 legal fish to the cooler and released maybe 1/2 doz shorts. My youngest caught 2 lady fish that put on a pretty good show, but other than 3 cats and 1 sail cat that was about it. We did have a super strong hit on a large pin fish trailing off the back and what ever it was even came back and hit the remaining bait a second time. Was running and taking drag but never got the circle hook. What ever it was would have been a good fish. My guess would be that it was a BIG trout.
"Good Judgement" comes from experience, ... and a lot of that..... results from "Bad Judgement".