Welcome Pensacola Fishing Forum and Gulf Coast Fishing Connection members!! Great to seeing the big jump in traffic!
Guided in Santa Rosa Sound yesterday and then over in East Bay today. Yesterday’s trip was strictly a redfish adventure with some Navarre residents that wanted to find some productive areas to fish near their home. Fished the same shallow banks and ledges as we did last week to find mostly over-sized redfish in the 30-36″ range but also put a few legal redfish on the boat as well. Stayed with the Gulp! 5″ Jerkshads and Gulp! 4″ Shrimp. We even picked up some small speckled trout in deeper water, one of which was inhaled by a large redfish halfway to the boat. It was a little tough seeing the redfish in overcast conditions but the presence of mullet really helped our efforts. Most fished released and a few hit the cooler.
Today’s trip was interesting. I guided three anglers on two boats since I’m still fishing the small 17′ Maverick and the new Pathfinder 2300 HPS isn’t quite ready. The guys just really wanted to learn the area and where to catch plenty of redfish and speckled trout. Put one angler on my boat and the other anglers followed in their own boat. The trip worked out surprisingly well as we were able to make really nice drifts in close proximity. Started with some speckled trout which were plentiful but found it difficult to produce larger fish. We did find some legal fish but the off-colored water definitely added to our difficulties. Worm rattles in the Gulps! increased our catch today. Next, we got on top of the redfish. Gulp! 5″ Jerkshads and Johnson 1/4oz Spoons were equally as productive. We found it challenging at first to get a redfish to measure with most stretching to 27.5-28.5″, but we eventually found the legal redfish. An alarming amount of redfish dropped the hooks today and we worked tirelessly to improve hookset techniques and strike recognition but I’m glad everyone was able to stick it to some great redfish. Mainly a catch and release trip today but the anglers took a few redfish and a trout home for dinner tonight. Redfish on the Halfshell! More trips this week and then guiding in Destin prior to the Redfish University seminars at Bass Pro Shop on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Hope to see everyone at Bass Pro over the weekend. Thanks, E Holstman
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