Did a little scouting this week with a few buddies to locate some fish for some upcoming trips. Wednesday I had Danny Francis aboard to help me key in on what the fishes moods are and what artificials they were willing to eat. I had Danny throwing MirrOlures New 5″ Soft Mullet soft plastic bait in a golden bream color rigged weedless. Blind casting the edge of a flat first thing in the morning resulted in some nice Sea Trout, shortly after catching a few trout Danny makes a long cast to a school of redfish that immediately gets hammered by a slot fish. Once the sun got high enough to sight cast for Redfish, we moved to a shallow grass flat close by. Tails started popping up around us along with cruising fish pushing “V” wakes. Danny gets a few of the tailing fish to eat but they shortly come unbuttoned. Winds started to blow 15-20mph out of the North which made the sight fishing tough so we decided to call it a great day!
Thursday, Matt Martin joined me for a half day. We arrive at the same flat first thing in the morning, we immediately see schools of Redfish. Matt was armed with an 8wt flyrod making great casts to schools all morning but we had a hard time getting the fish to eat. Maybe the full moon had something to do with it. After dropping Matt of at the ramp around 1pm, I decided to head back out and mess with the schools. Eddie Oliveras was also out there on his skiff fishing solo, we both met up and worked a flat chasing schools of fish around. I had a few redfish eat the 5″ MirrOlure soft mullet but landed only one of them. I then had Eddie anchor his boat up and hop on mine to do some flyfishing. We had great shots at multiple fish but none of them showed any interest. We decided to leave the schools and tailers to find different fish before in got dark. I follow Eddie to a flat that he had success on the week before, before even getting to his spot while idling in, we run into a huge feeding frenzy of Black Drum ranging in sizes of 10-20lbs, these fish were “drumming” under water and you can literally hear and feel the vibrations from them while they drummed all around us. Eddie anchors his boat and hops on mine, we then pole closer towards the schooled up tailing fish with me on the bow for a change. I tied on a black EP crab pattern that I had tied the night before just for Black Drum. After a few casts into the pods of fish, with a very slow presentation I come tight with my biggest Black Drum on a flyrod! After releasing the fish, Eddie hops on the casting platform, makes a couple casts and also comes tight on a Black Drum a tad bit smaller than mine. By this time the sun was going down, we were just admiring the scenery of the sun setting and tailing black drum all around us while we pole my skiff off of the flat to head back to the ramp.
Fishing is now starting to get really good, give me a call if you would like to chase some Redfish and maybe even get into some Black Drum as well if they are still around.
-Capt. Willy Le
321-303-7805
