The last cold front dropped the water temperature over 20 degrees and that changed things a bit, but not for long. The temperature went right back up to the upper 70's last week and everyday since the water temperature has come up too. As long as we don't get another cold front, the water temperature will be right back to where it was before to much longer. Keep reading… you might be surprised how quickly it's coming up.
The Trout are finally back in season and it seems like there is a fair amount of fish around. We had a number of fish that were over 20 inches last week, which for a Trout, it is a great fish. We didn't have as many fish quite that size, but we did manage to catch a few that near it and also many smaller fish. The Trout of the week was an awesome 24 inch fish, which is a gator Trout. If you check out the picture, you can see on my client's face he was happy to catch this fish. The fish put up a great fight and he managed to catch it on his own fishing rod. If I had to guess, I would say the rod had 8 lb line so you can only imagine how fun that fight was! The Trout fishing should be pretty good over the next few weeks as long as the temperature doesn't drop too much.
We haven't done much Snook fishing since they have gone out of season. Also the Red fish fishing has been so good that most of the guys have opted to do that. Most of the fish are moving up in the rivers and out of the bay. I had a few clients that wanted to go catch a few for fun, and that is just what we did. Most of the Snook were schoolies, being about 22-27 inches in size, but great fun to catch on light tackle. We managed to catch the fish in the picture out on the beach. As you can see in the picture, the Snook is really white in color and a 31 inch great fish. It was nothing like the fish the same guy hooked about 30 minutes earlier. We hooked a fish that was 30 inches pushing 40 inches. It was a great fish but we didn't manage to stay with this fish long. I did manage to see a number of fish out there on the beach, which usually this time of the year, they should be back in the bay. This has been a warm year so they might just stay out there. I sure do hope it doesn't get to cold to quick because it might put a hurting on these great fish.
The Red fish are still here! You can just about count on these fish this time of the year. You can always find some fish that want to eat. It doesn't matter if it's fishing with Shrimp, live bait, or maybe even some jigs. We fished with Shrimp most mornings because it was so cold and we did really well a few mornings. We caught a good number of fish, but most of these fish were a little smaller coming in at about 16 inches to 18 inches with a few just under 20 inches mixed in the bag. It was a great bite! Just about the time the Shrimp hit the bottom you had a fish on. As the days went on, we switched to fishing with live bait. We did a bit better with the live bait. Instead of catching smaller Red fish, we started catching 26 inches to 27 inches fish. The weather needs to get just a little colder or warmer so that one bait will work better than the other. Until then, we will just have to keep working hard at it to see what works every day. Please visit my website at www.castawaychartersinc.com.