My watch displayed 4:39 as I snuck out of the bedroom this morning, knowing that if I didn't take advantage of my unintended early rise I'd be tempted to sleep through my 6 a.m. alarm. The day's forecast was for early morning rain, and the rain from the night before could have flushed all the fish out to the inlets. I decided on Thursday I needed a fishing trip, though, so out the door I went.
The skiff hit the water at Bing's Landing just before 6 a.m. A resident snook came over to inspect my trailer lights as I tied her off at the dock. Good sign?
A ten-pound bag of ice for cold drinks and dinner guests was all that I needed from Capt. Herrera's awesome new shop before firing up and heading out for a day of slinging plastics on a couple of nearby flats I've grown intensely fond of recently.
I started with a chartreuse and black Top Dog which was inhaled after only a few minutes by a 19" redfish hanging under a school of mullet near the spartina.
I kept working the Top Dog along the edges of the spartina grass with multiple blow-ups until this slot trout picked a fight with it.
Not too many more toss-and-twitches and this upper slot red sucked down a chartreuse-head breakfast. He fought like a dump truck on my 10-pound spinning outfit. Under the boat, around the motor and over an oyster bar--my tough 20-pound flouro leader was the only thing that kept us tethered.
I moved down a couple of creeks as the rain started coming down, and I picked up a little trout on a DOA shrimp.
It was a great morning under grey skies on an outgoing tide. The flats were full of life and water levels were quite high, no doubt owing to the many inches of rain we've had every day this week. The fish were in amongst the mullet and seemed to prefer a steady walk-the-dog retrieve. Stay quiet and persistent--the reds will come.
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