I was paddling away from the launch at my favorite part of the day:
I turned to the north and started slowly working my way back to Snook Island. There were huge schools of mullet everywhere, so I was constantly stopping to make some casts. I had a early blow-up from a trout, but for the next three hours, I didn't get a single hit.
It was frustrating because I would see the occasional tailing red, and the conditions were ideal: light breeze, clear and weed-free water, overcast skies. The fish simply weren't biting.
By the time I got back to Snook Island, there wasn't really enough water to fish. I spent an hour trying to make the best of it, but blew my chance there by not getting to the sweet spot sooner.
I slowly paddled my way over toward the big body of water that runs near the little mangrove island that everyone fishes. I made casts every 50 yards or so, prospecting for fish.
At about 10:00am the sun came out and the bite started to suddenly heat up. Finally, I started to get some hits on my topwater, I figured they were little trout, lots of blow-ups but no hook-up. Eventually I got one to take my Spook, but to my surprise, it was a big ass pinfish. I continued to catch pinfish in this spot for 15 minutes, just happy to get some action. I kept three of the big pins to use as cut bait tomorrow.
Seeing that there were so many pins around, I changed my topwater to the Badonkadonk, which looks like a pinfish. A few casts in, I caught my first trout, right in the 18" range. After I snapped a photo and released him, I threw back into the same spot and my lure got slammed by something big. I never got to find out what it was, as the hook pulled mid-way in to the fight. From the way it fought, I'm going to call it a big trout.
I continued to drift over the flat, catching trout here and there and getting plastered by angry pinfish. My biggest trout came in a 21", shown below.
The bite turned back off at 11:30am, so I paddled off the flat before the water got too low. I spooked a lot of reds on the way in. At the end of the day I had caught six trout, none smaller than 18", and six pinfish, three of which are in my freezer for tomorrow.
It was a weird day on the water, but a hell of a lot of fun. It was good to be back out there.
