I haven’t been on the water much of all this summer, between work, friends cancelling trips, brutal heat, and no rain; I’ve just not been inspired to get out there and grind it out. I had a friend cancel on me again this weekend and I almost bagged the trip, but I stopped making excuses and forced myself to get out. Looking back at last years trips this time of year I knew exactly where I wanted to go, and it wasn’t the flats.
I launched early morning, and was in the water by 5am
The plan was to fish a few lights before sunrise then fish the drop offs of the shoreline as the sun came up. I pulled up to the first light and started throwing a brand new lure I just got, the matrix minnow… It’s a suspending jerk bait that dives 2-5ft and has some rattles. It’s 3&1/2 in and has the tiniest hooks I’ve ever seen on a lure, but they’re razor sharp.
I pulled out 2 tiny speckled trout, maybe 10 inches and decided to move on to the next light. At the next light I put the jerk bait away bc I didn’t want to be tearing up and killing a bunch of tiny fish I couldn’t keep, so I tied on a glow/firetail Doa shrimp. Within 5 casts I had a 17 in trout in the boat. I fished this light for another hour until sunrise and picked up around 15 keeper speckled trout, switching between the doa shrimp and a paddle tail, but they were all cookie cutter 14-15 in fish that were skinny.
As the sun came up I started moving down the shoreline to deeper water, I moved about a mile down the shoreline and was pulling up on a point I was going to fish when a 100k pb jumped right in front of me and threw his Trolling motor down, on his first cast in the area I wanted to fish he caught a nice 20 in speck. I grunted and moved around him without causing a scene. There was one other point close by I went to check, when I got there it was dead with no bait, I caught another 10 in dink. By this time the pb had moved on and I moved back in on the point I wanted to fish. There was a lot of tide movement with a falling tide and the wind was blowing hard down the shoreline, perfect conditions for this little point.
It was around 830 around this time and the major feed was due to happen 930-1130… I started picking up fish quickly on this point, one after the other and the bite heated up more and more as we got closer to the major. The fish seemed to be in a tiny area, maybe 1000 sqft or so, and if I got of my spot I’d immediately stop getting bit. I fished in this little zone for the next 2 and a half hours and caught speck after speck, most of them 15-17 inches and a ton of 14in. Fish. I had 2 or 3 sizable specks around 20-23 in get the lure deep, only to come rushing to tge surface throwing violent head shakes and throwing the lure… I couldn’t keep any of the larger fish pinned but got a kick out of it.
All in all I boater around 40 specks for the day with 25 of them coming from this tiny zone. The lure of the day was the Norton sand shad 5in in Salt N Pepper w/ chrt tail. I was incredibly impressed by the durability of this bait as well as the action (Tons of body roll on the bait) It reminds me of a DSL lure which is sort of a hybrid between a paddle tail and rat tail, I’ll definitely be throwing these more often. It was a great day of nonstop action that you can only get from trout fishing. Looking back at my prior trips, this same area has produced for me year after year, on the same moon, in the same heat. I guess sometimes we do figure it out, and even though I didn’t get any big ones, I had a blast. I can’t wait for fall, fishing only gets better from here!
Tight Lines
-YakBoi
but did the trick. Get better. Going fishing with you is on my bucket list.