Guided new Pensacola resident, Wendell Thompson, this morning for a thorough tour of our inshore waters. Wendell is a great bass fisherman and contacted Redfish University to introduce him to some of it’s very productive areas for redfish and speckled trout where he could use some similar bass fishing techniques to score great numbers of these popular inshore species. I decided to bring some rods and test each area with a 5-6 casts with Wendell just to make sure he was satisified with each area. Started at 600am with maps, a Sharpie and notebook in hand. Cruised over to Escambia Bay and East Bay stopping at various areas. At each area, we spent a few minutes discussing, in detail, weather conditions, tide conditions, winds, water clarity and amounts of bait/mullet. Made a few casts, caught a few redfish and trout and then moved on. *In today’s windy conditions and sometimes off-colored water, the Gulp! Jerkshads with plastic worm rattles worked great and even some topwater baits got some attention.* Around 900am, we trailered over to Santa Rosa Sound where we covered some great areas on the north and south side between Tiger Point and Navarre Beach. These areas are great because we were able to see lots of redfish and trout in the shallows, over sand and everywhere else. *In these areas, we used 1/4oz. Johnson Gold Spoons and Gulp! Jerkshads weedless in camo for the redfish and Gulp! 3″ Shrimp in camo over the deeper holes of the speckled trout.* It really made no difference between protected and wind-blown banks. In fact, the wind-blown were a little better. Wendell got some great coverage today and learned a ton about our inshore fishery. There’s no doubt he will be extremely successful in the very near future(like tomorrow!.) Covered almost 60 miles of water today and burned 12.7 gals of fuel. I love the Yamaha VMax SHO 250. Back to regular Redfish U. fishing trips the rest of the week so look for more great reports to follow. E Holstman
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