Capt. Brooks and Fishing on a Winters Day

After some practice lessons, my two clients that couldn't cast worth a darn at first, improved enough to attempt to hit the fishing holes and hook into some fish, for my first evening fishing trip of the week.

A bunch of sea grass got uprooted from the strong southeast winds that started up around 7pm with the front that was approaching. The wads of floating, dead sea grass was making it harder to retrieve baits without snagging and it was altering the bait's movement. There were good places that redfish and a few speckled trout were hunkered down under the dead grass, but we couldn't get either one to hit on the retrieves, they sensed something wasn?t right! Cast after cast, the clients kept trying for a strike that seemed non-existent even though we could see the fish chasing the lures.

We decided to try our luck somewhere to get out of the wind, but that was similar to the 18-30 feet water we just left. We found some bigger redfish, although there weren't as many of them, in similar areas, sandy bottom with some cracked oyster shells, that didn?' have as much dead, sea grass to contend with.

Because the water was too clear to throw darker jigs, we opted for a Pink Hologram Devil Eye on a 1/16 oz. TruLoc jig head, and decided to jig the baits slowly up and down to see if we got a strike. It didn't take long to see them striking at the bait and the clients saw them start following the rig because the water was so clear, but they were retrieving it too fast to hook the redfish. Once I told them to relax and let the bait get in front of the fish, wait until you feel the strike and THEN set the hook, and shortly after that, the redfish started sucking their fishing lures down like they were candy.

Five of them got their limits of reds in the 24" to 26.5" range. All of them were hooked deep and solid, there was no way that they were getting off!

Next, we hit a channel near some descending flats that was sand and mixed grass beds, to try for some speckled trout. The color we had been using was a bit sandier and we tried using the same action but the clients that were rigged differently, one with a Root beer Devil Eye and the other with a Strawberry one were getting all the hits, from peckerheads to 21 inches and there were a lot more where those came from.

The larger trout were lying in the potholes on top of the flats, there weren't as many of them but they were quality fish. The drop off had more fish that were smaller in size, but there were some keepers mixed in there as well. They ended up with 14 speckled trout and plenty of action with a lot of throw-backs... not bad for a 3.5 hour trip!

Part of the success had to be attributed to the new TruLoc jig heads, because they have some great quality, sharp hooks!!! We didn't lose a single thing because of the hooks, but lost tails from two of the lures because of the way those redfish were sucking them in and no other worm could've done any better with the abuse those fish were dishin' out.