fished econfina friday thru monday. overall it was a great trip. newfisher eluded to the wreck in the river on monday over on the northwest florida sportsman forum. friends of mine make fun of me b/c i don't go thru the shortcut to the right and instead go thru the no wake zone to the left. the bad wreck is why. that shortcut is a death trap. it was a terrible head on collision yesterday. hope everyone will be careful out there. it is not worth a totaled boat and possible loss of life to save 2 minutes to the water. now the report:
friday was pretty tough. could only find very few fish. redfish were very slow and ended up that way all weekend. managed three keeper trout and a beautiful dark red on friday.
saturday some friends took me offshore for my first experience with grouper. bad day to be the first time except all other days in the future that i go offshore will be awesome weather wise b/c it could not have possibly been more rough unless you were in a hurricane. we caught several grouper despite the conditions, but you couldn't enjoy the fishing for the 5 and occasional six footers. luckily we had a great boat to be out there in or we would have been in for a terribly long day. the sea sickness was at the top of my throat all day but i managed to keep it down. we were out 26 miles.
sunday was awesome. we went back to plan A which is get the map out and find a new area that might hold some fish. we found it. had 8 nice trout (17 to 19 inches) in about 1 hour in the morning. went in to redfish and caught a little of everything. even caught a nice 18 inch trout up in the grass. also caught a nice flounder, an aligator, a turtle (both by accident, they just couldn't resist the grub we were using hahahaha) a redfish and a nice suntan (great weather). we also saw several sheepshead on oyster bars which i thought was strange for this late in the year. the water was pretty cool for this late due to all the recent afternoon rains. needed one trout to make the limit and got it on the first cast back out at the trout hole.
monday was same result on the trout hole. unfortunately we couldnt' get our act together. we should have honestly had a limit in about 30 minutes, but i lost the first four fish on the first four cast at the boat. they were extremely finicky. ended up inking out 6 nice fish, but there were tons of shorts mixed in which was not the case the day before. all fish were very nice the day before. we must have caught 60 to 70 trout in the morning losing a bunch at the boat. the redfish were hiding again. i don't know what the deal was, but they were just not eating what we had to offer all weekend.
anyway, all fish caught on grubs in one small area. everyone else seemed to have a pretty tough weekend on the trout. it was extremely crowded on saturday. i think most everyone was scallop hunting, but no one stuck around long because it was so rough. we were in from offshore at 4 and there were only 5 or 6 trailors left. also, man there were a ton of alligators. i guess the freshwater coming in from the storms had them moving around, but we must have seen 10 gators or so out on the points while we were redfishing.
Econ 7-1 thru 7-4
Moderators: bman, Chalk, Tom Keels
