The highlight of this past week was treating my better half to an early morning fishing trip to the NIRL.
We left the boat launch in near darkness and dropped off-plane a few miles away in barely twilight conditions. The water was calm and within a few minutes I spotted a pod of what I assumed was redfish rippling the surface of the water.
I was poling quietly towards the ripples as Kim starts casting her Z-Man pearl colored Diezel Minnowz in the direction of our quarry. She connects only three casts into her day and we’re still not close to the fish I can see. A healthy spotted seatrout comes to the surface shaking it’s head and regurgitating a belly full of fry-fish.
Kim repeats this sequence only two casts later with an even larger trout, about nineteen inches or so. Finally I get the boat near enough to our targets and she’s hooked onto her third fish. This one is a slot redfish as we both expected.
Kim’s third fish of the morning and flash photography was still needed. Kim caught five upper slot trout and this redfish in the first hour or so of the trip!
The pod of fish moved away for a minute or two, but came right back towards us as we assumed our positions. I gently swing the bow of the Banshee Extreme into position as Kim fires off another cast and another hook-up occurs!
This fish proved to be another nice trout as do the rest of the fish she caught this particular morning. While I expected the pod of fish rippling the water’s surface to be redfish they turned out to be top-slot seatrout!
They were feeding on tiny minnows grouping on the surface. In fact we were fishing a deeper shoreline area holding almost no mullet, but loaded with fry-fish. This pattern is not unusual and worth watching for this time of year.
