Since it was low tide, I paddled out to the southeast in search of deeper water along the channel. At some point I got into about three feet of water and anchored up. I started throwing topwater and had some good follows, but couldn't get anything to take the lure. It was 10-15 knots of wind the entire day, which made the topwater fishing pretty poor. Too much chop.
At some point I decided to put on a 1/8 chartreuse jig head with a DOA CAL shad tail, and immediately started catching below-the-slot trout. When the shad tail wore out, I put on a paddle tail. When the paddle tail wore out, I put on my rootbeer shrimp tail. In about an hour and a half, I caught 10 trout, only one in the slot. Still, it was good fishing.
My 11th fish hit really hard and fought like hell. I was super surprised to see a juvenile gag grouper on the other end of the line. (Sorry, couldn't get the photo to rotate.)
With just an hour left before I had to get off the water, I drifted back toward our angry trout spot, with a popping cork and half a pinfish dragging behind. In the meantime, I threw the jighead/shrimp tail combo, which eventually rewarded me with a very nice redfish. 21-ish inches, and so bronzed up. Sexy redfish. I took it home for dinner.
Solid fishing for two and a half hours on the water. Nice to have it all to myself. If it had been a calm day, it might have been epic.
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