Monday I was joined once again by Topwater Tony and true to form he came rigged and ready with his bone colored Skitterwalk. Though Tony worked hard and covered lots of prime mangrove shoreline the fish had no interest in feeding on top.
Switching to a Z-Man Curly Tailz in my favorite pearl color was all we needed to do. The snook, trout, jacks, ladyfish and a foot long mutton snapper greedily devoured this jig as Tony hopped it along the sandy shorelines. Truth be told, Tony should have slammed this trip as a smallish redfish ate the Curly Tailz about fifteen feet from the boat and expelled it as fast as we saw it disappear. Sometimes the fish win!
The water temperature started in the low seventy degree range at first light and creeped up into the mid seventy degree range by mid-day. I can’t for the life of me understand their unwillingness to eat a surface plug…
Later in the week Caleb joined me as I scouted the waters north of Round Island. The topwater bite was sluggish for Caleb as I caught plenty of trout and more on the pearl Curly Tailz. We eventually left the shoreline trout bite and worked our way out into open water.
It seemed like every place we found manatees we also skipped pompano. Once we skipped a fish or two we drifted the area while jigging Caleb’s version of the “Goofy jig”. No pompano were caught, though we did catch some incidentals and Caleb twice snapped his line shortly after setting the hook. We’ll never know what took his jigs but I’m thinking either big pompano or permit!
