Windy Winter Fishing with Capt. Brooks

The first evening trip of the week and I finally had some clients to take out for some windy winter fishing. They weren't much at casting when they first arrived, but we worked with them a bit and they got good enough to hit the practice targets.

The strong southeast winds were approaching with the front at around 7pm this evening, and a bunch of sea grass was uprooted and floating everywhere, making it hard to retrieve baits and messing with their retrieve. The grass bed had floated over many of the best places and hiding lots of redfish and a few speckled trout. Both species were following the grass covered lures but acted skittish and wouldn?t take the bait! The clients anxiously watched, continuously casting for the fish that wouldn't bite.

We finally decided to leave the sand and grass beds that were about 18 to 30 feet deep to find somewhere that the winds weren't blowing so hard. We came across a spot that was similar in depth and bottom that didn?t have the floating sea grass but had some scattered oyster shells, which might indicate there could be some larger redfish holding there, but just not as many, it seemed anyway.

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!

So then we decided to try for speckled trout in another area, since we had done so well with the redfish. A channel near the flats with sand and mixed grass beds provided cover and we tried the same action except the color was sandier here. One client rigged with a Rootbeer Devil Eye and the other with a Strawberry one, were getting all the hits, and there were trout to 21" and plenty of them.

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.