So all I’ve been hearing is the bite has been slow and ****ty this weekend and I wasn’t going to go fishing, BUUUT, I woke up around 8 AM and saw it was going to be 76 today so I decided to go anyway just because it was so nice out.
I put the kayak in at the marina around 9 AM. I was fishing with Z-man paddle tails and trout tricks. Fished all structure and creek mouths I could find, TONS of mullet jumping, but not really any bait schooling that I could find. Nothing at all until 10:15 when I hooked what seemed to be a 18 inch red that broke off on some oysters at almost dead low tide and managed to drop my camera in the water somehow! (**().
Gave up around 2:00 PM and decided to head back to the marina. Left my two lines out to troll on the way back. BAM! The only reason my rod didn’t go flying out was because I had clipped in wrong, lucky I guess. I ended up landing a 17" trout on the Z-man paddle-tail, and another 8" trout off the trolling trout trick on the way back.
Made the day worth it, and got a decent meal for me with the one trout. I’m not even really pissed I lost my camera after that I caught the two trout.
Sorry about your camera. I was getting skunked one day a few weeks ago and decided to call it a day. As I paddled back to the landing, I decided to leave a MM on a jig head trolling behind my yak. I caught 7 trout and a red on the way. I had never done that before but I troll every time now, even if it is on my way to a specific spot.
I hadn’t ever done it ever before today either but I’m always going to do it now. Did you have any weight on the MM? Because when I was trolling my Trout Trick, no matter how much line I gave it, it always was near the surface.
Yes, I put a mud minnow on a 1/4 oz jig head and just let it bounce along on the bottom. I keep the drag pretty loose in case I snag something other than a fish. Took me a few times to get used to whether it was fish or bottom.
I make it a point to troll a jig of some sort while paddling to and from a fishing spot. Trout are schooling fish and of you catch a trout, anchor up and start throwing your jig. It can change a trip. Several years ago we ran into a local guide near IOP marina. He took my youngest son under his wing and showed him how to drift a DOA. While we were sitting there, he in a boat and us in kayaks, they caught about a dozen trout in 20 minutes drifting a DOA along a shoreline.
“There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.”
Ernest Hemingway