One thing I’ve learned over the years when fishing inshore is to keep your options open. If you are dead set on a particular technique and do not adapt your strategy, you may have a long day without any action. Last week Tim and I took my 6 year old son out for a half-day inshore adventure. We had planned on a minnow trap full of minnows and some great trout and redfish action. The morning we left the dock we had 2 mudminnows and a couple of crabs. Having been down this road before Tim thought to bring some frozen mullet he had in his freezer and a variety of rigs and lures. We put some cut mullet down on the bottom and began to fish the point we had chosen with a grub, one top-water Mirro-Lure, and a float with crab.
The first rod to go off was the bottom rig and Jacob was on the rod and after a lengthy fight brought a decent sized shark to the boat that he thought was really cool when he got a look at all of those sharp teeth. As we were releasing that fish the float disappeared and after a really long fight on light tackle we landed a rather large bonnet-head shark. A few moments later the bottom rig set up a on Penn 920 began to scream. I picked it up and and set the hook only to have the drag scream louder and the fish headed toward the deep part of the river. The line began to come to the surface and I thought for sure we may see a jump of some sort and the hook parted ways with the line. We never really knew what type of fish it was, but I imagine it was probably better as a fish story anyway. The other crab on the float was cut-off, due to another shark. Last, but not least I caught a small blue fish on the top-water plug. Not a great fight, but really fun watching him swat the lure several times before getting the hooks.
The morning was a great morning with some great action, lots of laughs and fun and plenty of speculation about the one that got away. Without a back up plan it could have been a long hot morning. My son is already looking forward to the next adventure and so am I.
<font co