On last night's show, "Average Angler Adventures," they aired a program focused on fishing inshore in cold weather. The gist of the show was to tie on a soft body bait, fish slow, and fish for trout.
At about 3:30pm today, Shawn's mom called to say that she was going to pick up Reilly at school. If I didn't mind. Translated into my mind: Would you like to go fishing on the way home instead of picking up Reilly?
I answered along the lines of, "Does a banana peel from top to bottom?"
My goal was a bit ambitious: To fish three spots, 20 minutes each. I started at a new spot, a bridge that I drive over on the way from Reilly's school to 62nd Avenue. There is a canal that runs through there, too narrow and shallow for a boat, and though it runs by a series of houses, I thought it looked underfished.
I tied on a red 1/4oz jighead and a green/white Gulp shrimp, and commenced casting. I had some very light bites on my first and second retreive, just some small baitfish, I imagine. Next, I caught a construction cone. That's right, an orange construction cone, coated in barnacles. You might think that it irritated me, but quite the contrary, I was psyched to see that my line and knot held fast reeling in what I thought was a huge snook. Okay, it was a bit disappointing. I thought I had a lunker on the line.
I worked my way toward the bridge, where the water narrows, and on my first cast, got stuck on the bottom for a second. When I reeled in my lure, I realized that I had missed a rather large bite.
Exhibit A:
Note the missing tail and two hole-punch style punctures in the middle of the body. My best guess on this one is that it was a sheepshead.
I tried what was left of the lure on a few more casts, and then packed up and drove over to the next location: Snell Isle Secret Spot.
Since the Gulp had been decimated as shown in Exhibit A above, I tied on a DOA shrimp in the rootbeer color and commenced casting. On the second cast, I felt some tension, raised my rod and the fight was on. The fish came right to the top, jumped, and dove deep again. As I got it closer to the seawall I saw that it was a large spotted sea trout, and quickly hoisted it up, measured it against my pole, and tossed it back in.
A few casts later, I had my second fish on, but it self-released before I could get it within sight. From the sensitivity of the bite, it was likely another trout.
I had a little daylight left, so cast out toward a dock, and after a few slow bounces off the bottom, caught my third trout, which I was able to land, measure, and safely return to the water.
I walked back to my car, measured my pole marks with a tape measure and found that the smallest trout was 11", the largest 15". The larger trout was my first keeper-sized trout of the season.
If I could ever get around to buying a cooler, I might actually bring home a trout dinner sometime soon.
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