Another good day at Suwannee 12/21
Jim311
Posts: 4,961 Captain
Tide was pretty low in the morning so we got a late start and made it to the water around 10 to find that there was plenty of water already and it was coming in fast. We fished a new creek hoping to explore and picked away at the reds for a few minutes, finding a few on just about every bar or rocky point. The tide came in fast so we pushed to the outside bars and edges to look for bigger fish but didn't really find them, so we went back to the creeks and found the reds again. This time we'd position ourselves a little better and find schooled up mid slot reds and pull several out of each spot, they seemed to be preferring deeper rocky cuts. We also caught tons of schooly trout but the bigger trout were holding in the deeper points and deep edges of bars pretty close to where one might look for redfish, but there were only a few solid good fish in each of those spots. I hooked a very solid red on a mirrodine that I fought for several minutes before it shook the hook. I've never had one fight quite as hard, in fact I never even got him close enough to the boat to even see him. Everytime I'd fight him close he'd take a long 20 yard run and the fight would start over, it was incredible. I was bummed I'd lost him, but also stoked to have hooked what was obviously a really big red on pretty light tackle. Anyway we caught lots of fish but nothing trophy worthy so I didn't take many pics except this one because I thought it was just a pretty looking fish! As far as baits they seemed to solidly prefer Adam's gulp shrimp on a jighead being bounced on the bottom slowly. He outfished us by a pretty good margin. I caught some on just about everything I threw as well. I used gold spoons, mirrodines, flukes, paddletails.. whatever I felt like using really.
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Last time in had a red fight like you described he was 40+inches, he's still out there!
Prior to Sunday weather was awesome. Water was very cold in the creeks, high 50s. Left Sunday morning to make the long trek home, weather was pretty crappy with the rain front that had arrived.
Fished with friends/relatives a couple of times, fished alone Saturday. There were tons of people down fishing so I picked the most treacherous creek Saturday I could think of to "thin" possible boat traffic. Was nice, only saw two airboats and not one other outboard other than mine and those guys left as soon as I pulled back in the creek. Fished the incoming tide and blew through 50 live shrimp and then switched to a gulp and jighead. Probably caught 40 reds and drum on the shrimp then another 25 on the gulp before the tide flooded and quit. All that and only 1 keeper red and a couple of drum.
Pic from Friday with several friends, terrible picture but smallest was 19 inches.
I tried taking my big ol' fiberglasses 22' pathfinder up Jack's creek on Saturday... we didnt find a single thing. I got about 1/2 way up the creek (as far as I dare), and saw one small rat, one larger fish (swear it looked like a snook), and that was it! For four hours....
Then we hit the flats for 30m and caught a couple of keepers and a couple of shorts. So, all that work and we were in the wrong place!
That is very true. Get away from the river and the water looks like Ozello. First creek I fished way north on Thursday was crystal clear and void of any fish. I didn't even see a mullet there. I got out of there in a hurry and went hunting. I probably logged 30 miles total fishing that particular day but ended up getting on them.