Fishing Report – June 24th, 2011

Location: 4^th Street

Tide: Incoming

Today, Kelly and I bailed of work early to try our hand at som

e afternoon fishing. We headed out to 4^th Street out of convenience, and I beat him there by about 15 minutes since he stopped for bait. I launched quickly and just as quickly, a rainstorm ran up on me. I parked my yak under the Howard Frankland Bridge to wait it out. Just as the storm passed, I saw Kelly launching. While I waited for him to paddle over, I half-heartedly threw my Yo-zuri and Gulp around the bridge pilings, but nothing doing.

We paddled east toward The Cut. There was a lot of action in the water, so we stopped to throw a few topwaters along the way. I got a hit, but not hook-up, and we both had a few follows after that, but nothing to the boat.

We fished The Cut hard for the next hour and a half. I got totally skunked, but Kelly picked up two under-slot redfish on a live shrimp suspended under a popping cork.

At some point I anchored up to throw at a downed tree in the water that was holding glass minnows. Just before I made my first cast, I saw a red tailing around the tree. I commenced to place one beautiful cast after another at that bastard but his mouth was slammed shut.

Annoyed, I paddled over to Kelly, told him the story and said he could probably hook up with the red with a well-placed live shrimp. He obliged, and on his second cast, came tight on the red. After he boated the red and let it free, he awarded me an assist.

Fishing Report – June 12th, 2011

Location: Fort Desoto, Mullet Key

Tide: Incoming

I did a lot of planning in advance of this trip, really trying to think out the best way to get on some fish. Basically it came down to site selection, and being as close to the gulf as possible without fishing the actual beach. The spot I picked was the easternmost point of Mullet Key on Ft. Desoto: 27.638162,-82.700164. My plan was to throw topwater in the cove for the first hour, then to soak some pins in Egmont Channel for the rest of the time to try to hook up with a tarpon.

Those plans were shot to hell when at 5:30 this morning I couldn't seem to castnet any pinfish at Coffee Pot Bayou. There were a lot of weeds in the water and made it impossible to net any bait. From there, I hit the Rally for coffee and a donut and then drove out to Ft. Desoto. The Bunce’s Pass parking spot already had six cars parked and yaks launched when I rolled by at 6:15. I ended up on the water right at 6:30, just as the sun was coming up. I was thinking I should have brought along some Windex, you know, for all that glass.

It was low tide at 3:45am, high tide at 11:00am, so I was in the middle of the tide. It was moving, but not too fast.

I paddled out about fifty yards into about two feet of water over eel grass and started throwing my pearl colored Spook, Jr. There were a lot of weeds in the water, but not so much that I couldn't work with it. I found that if I made a long cast and then walked the dog slowly, I could get 4-6 good moves in before catching a weed. That was enough to coax a trout to bite on my fourth cast. The first trout was my smallest of the day, maybe 14". Next cast, BAM! Another trout, just a tad larger. I just took a little pause at that point and had a smile. After two recent skunkings, it was good to get my mojo back.

At this point I had a little equipment malfunction with one of the eyes on my topwater pole, which was aggravating. Basically, I could put the eye back in and it would last me a couple of casts before popping out again. Eventually I gave up on the pole and just decided to fish with my Gulp, but not before catching another six trout on topwater, all at the top of the slot, a couple maybe over 20". For every fish I caught, I had twice as many fish that either knocked the Spook out of the water or generally swiped and missed the lure.

So I switched over to the Gulp and caught another two trout, both big yellow mouths. The tide was still rising, so I paddled back in a bit to get back in that two-foot range of water. As I was paddling back in I saw what I thought was a tarpon, but it was really a 40" plus snook tailing. I reached for my topwater...arg...

It was 9:30am at that point, but I decided to tie on another topwater and hunt around for that snook. Put on the Bomber Badonk-a-donk. Didn't catch the snook, but caught two more trout over the grass (with plenty more hits) and then another monster trout while casting at the mangroves right where I put in. That one surprised me. Last trout on topwater was at 10:15am. Crazy they were hitting that late.

I took my last 45 minutes and paddled out toward the channel just to check it out. A lot of eel and turtle grass, pristine water. Shit loads of mullet. The water was about 7 feet at the channel marker, and only a 10 minute paddle to get there. There were some nice big sandy patches mixed in, but no classic potholes. I kept wishing I had some live bait to put under a popping cork. In fact, that whole area out there is prime for drifting with a popping cork and a shrimp. I threw the Gulp and topwater a few times but didn't really take the time to work a spot over. Had the pinfish pecking at my Gulp, but that's about it.

Tried a mangrove spoil island on the way back and nothing was going. A bunch of yahoos had just waded all over it, so the fish had shut down.

Went back for a half dozen more casts in my original spot and got a trout to hit on topwater one last time, but missed the hookset. Paddled back to the car and was off the water by 11:00am.

A few other notes: it was busy out there, boats, yaks, waders, jetskis, you name it, but there is so much water, I never felt intruded upon. The water clarity was good, the grass beds were thick, and there was some good depth variation within just yards, so it was easy to get to a different depth without paddling all day. I only focused on maybe a 40 square yard area out there, so there is a lot of water yet to explore. I think it makes a good summer spot, but don't know how it would be in the wind. The wind laid down for me all day, can't say that it ever broke 5mph, though the true glass conditions only really lasted the first hour or so.

All I can say is that I love throwing the topwater, and it was topwater-palooza today!