I was planning to fish on Saturday, but when I woke up at 5 AM I couldn’t see my neighbor’s house across the street. The weatherman said we’d have thick fog until 10, so I went back to sleep. By 8 it was a beautiful, clear morning. I was kicking myself in the butt.
Sunday I wasn’t going to let that happen. When we launched the boat at 6:30 it was still dark. The fog was still thick. We stayed close to the landing and fished until we could see well enough to move. I was throwing my old faithful topwater plug and hooked up with four nice trout. One jumped completely out of the water when it hit my plug. That was wild. I got four of them to the boat, but thanks to my buddy’s lackluster net work, I only got two into the boat.
The fog was finally clearing out, so we headed upstream and tried a new creek. We saw a few fish, but the water was pretty dirty. On to the next spot where I pulled my minnow trap and actually had some minnows inside. After trying lots of different baits, the one that worked was crushed tortilla chips and dry cat food. Trolling on into the creek, I hooked up with a small largemouth bass.
By now I was beating my buddy pretty bad in the fish count, so he decided we needed to move to a spot where he usually kicks my butt at fishing. Well we went to his spot, and the water was the dirtiest of the day. Nothing.
It was getting to be about lunchtime, and I had a deadline to be home, so we called it a day.
Bait is still everywhere out there. The water temp had warmed up a little in the past week from 71 to 74 degrees.
My new personal best trout on topwater:
I gotta get a better net. Mine bruised this one up pretty good, but it swam off fine.
That first one hit so hard and fought so well that I was convinced it was a redfish until I got it to the boat.
Have y’all ever had a trout jump completely out of the water hitting a lure? I have had a ladyfish do that and seen a red come halfway out of the water, but this looked like Air Jaws on Shark Week.
Semper Fi
18’ Sterling
115 Yamaha
Big Ugly Homemade Blue Push Pole
Hoof, if you change those hooks out and put some sharp ones on (Gammy, VMC, Owner, Mustad) you might catch a few more that your net buddy didn’t get before.
Do you prefer two treble hooks or three? Does it make any difference?
I have been using a mirolure that looked like the plug in this post (red/white). It had three treble hooks and I never changed them for anything better.
I hooked several redfish and trout with it in shallow water (2 ft.) just as daylight started or just as it was getting dark.
I lost a real nice redfish that somehow came off the hook. I did catch a 22" trout that came off the hook after I landed it.
Finally, I lost a stud redfish that broke the line and took my mirolure away.
