A Big Trout Story: Over my 30 years of guiding , I've developed a strong love for shallow water fishing and push poling to find fish. I probably have more hours on my push pole than on my motor. It always amazes me why a guide would buy a $ 55,000.00 tower boat with trolling motors on the trim tabs and try to fish in a foot and half of water where a flats boat goes . Or the guide or average angler goes barging into an area to fine fish with a trolling motor and goes over all the fish. Monday January 5th was a normal day on the water, I had a fly and bait charter with a Captain from Maine trying to get out of the cold.
After a couple of hours throwing the fly for trout we decided to try some tailing reds. I found a large school of mullet out away from a small mangrove island this time of year , it's a pleasant surprise to find a school of mullet that will hold still after being chased by cast netters. Has any body noticed that now that the news papers, guides association and CCA have put the gill netters out of business more and more local fishing guides have got their restricted species license. How did they get there licenses ? Maybe the local mullet wrappers should investigate the hypocrites . Now back to the story, I tossed a shrimp into the and handed my customer the rod then tossed out another one.
I was showing him how to jig the shrimp up with the rod tip and let it back down when something bumped it. I handed him the rod with the bale opened and told him to set the hook , in doing so the rod bent and the drag started going , I could see it was a red fish. He fought the the red for about 3 to 4 minutes when the line went slack , he looks at me and said it came off. Next thing we know it starts taking off again and for the next 15 minutes he fights the fish we believe to be a red, as the fish gets closer to the boat I can see it ‘s a monster trout. I go to the back of the boat to get the net and I here him say it's a red because he could see a spot on it's tail , back up front with net I look at the red and see the trout with a red in it's mouth. Now panic has come over both us with me telling him to slide the fish slowly over to me, the trout slams on brakes and starts shaking it head and out comes the red and the trout swims off. Now his fighting the red again , netting the red and measured the red at 13". The trout had eaten the red head first all the way up to the spot on the tail. I've caught a 13 lb. trout near the same place and every year I catch one or two trout in the 7 to 10 pound range , but this trout had to be over 15 lbs an over 36 " long.
Tampa Bay Fishing Guide