A little over a year ago I picked up an 8 wt with the intention of catching redfish. Today, I accomplished that goal…
Today I went out with a generous friend and one of his friends. We met at Krispy Kreme, grabbed some coffee and a donut for the road and set out. We arrived at the destination at about 9:30 - a walk-to wading spot that my friend knew of. We donned our waders, readied our rods, and set out.
We saw a lot of action on the flats at first, but seeing and catching were two different things. It was well over an hour before my friend broke the ice with a nice black drum. A few minutes later, his friend set the hook on a rat red. As he was landing the fish, my friend hooked up again, this time with a sheepshead. No schitt! (As you can tell by the look on his face, he was pretty shocked, too)
Alright dammit, it’s my turn to hook up with something. Sure enough, a few minutes later I felt a tug on the line, set the hook, and the fight was on! Could it be? Was I finally going to break the “fly rod redfish skunk?” Nope - a 15" flounder had taken my fly. Don’t get me wrong, I was pretty stoked to catch a flounder OTF (another first on the day), but when you’re after Mr. Spottail, a barely keeper sized flattie won’t cut it. No pics of this guy - he decided to release himself while I was digging in my pocket for the camera.
A few more casts and it was time to head back to the trucks for lunch. We already had a sort of inshore super slam between the three of us - a redfush, black drum, sheepshead, and flounder. We wanted more, though, so we decided to pack it up and head to another spot.
On our way out, we ended up doubling back behind the flats we were fishing. We had seen a lot of activity towards the back of the flats, but hadn’t been able to get to them due to deep water and extremely soft mud. We saw a creek that fed into the
