A nice string of early-week trips after a much needed vacation period. Guided groups of local anglers looking for instruction for redfish and speckled trout with artificial baits. Great tide movement and the action was superb althought Monday and Tuesday were a bit windy and rainy. Each trip began with loads of speckled trout and we found plenty of redfish on shallow water flats and sandbar ledges. As the tide rose, we found some flounder in a few shallow areas and, of course, we see more than we catch. Surprisely, there were an unusual amount of flounder in the backwater areas of Pensacola this Winter and early Spring. We used Gulp! 5″ Jerkshads and Johnson 1/4oz Spoons to take the speckled trout and redfish, respectively. All trips ended in a very exciting way. Right before sunset we will toss topwater Sebile Bongos over the shallow flats to produce great numbers of redfish and larger speckled trout. Most fish released and some made it home for dinner. Trips booked for the rest of the month and into April. Thank you everyone for starting 2012 with a BANG! at Redfish University. Take care, E Holstman Please click an image to...

We’ve had a very stiff wind out of the southeast the last few days but the redfish and speckled trout don’t mind at all. During some periods, the winds approached 30-plus mph so boat positioning was definitely in focus and casting with the wind was a must. With the slow water conditions, some wind actually helps triggers a better bite during the neap tides and slow water so the more wind, the better. Fishing the Gulp! 5″ Jerkshads and Johnson 1/4oz Johnson Gold Spoons slowly also helps, along with being around some large numbers of both species. In addition, light 6# Ultracast InvisiBraid and 1/4oz jigheads made bite recognition much easier. It was VERY windy. Yesterday and today, I guided some local Pensacola anglers in search of instructional, techniques and locations for Spring-time redfish and speckled trout. Both trips, we focused on wind-blown banks and covered banks to find great numbers. As long as we found nice concentrations of bait and mullet, we had no problem sticking great fish. Found redfish in the 22-29″ range and some speckled trout up to 22″. There’s really been some quality speckled trout around this early Spring as we’d expect. We also hooked some flounder but they never made it in the boat. Average catches for the last few days totaled 8-15 redfish and 15-30 speckled trout from 14-22″. Each day a limit of redfish and a few 16-18″ trout were taken for dinner. We encourage the larger trout to be release along with the larger 25-27″ redfish. Taking a few days off to get the new 2300 Pathfinder HPS tighten up and loaded. Thanks, E Holstman Please click an image to...