First up on Tuesday then, was Derek Pederson, down from Rogers, Minnesota. We were on the water at around 10 AM, to fish the whole incoming tide. After a paddle of about half a mile, and then a run on the trolling motors of another half mile we were at our starting point. We were going to work the plentiful potholes for big winter trout. And, we sure found them.
We had a tough time getting out two limits because most of the trout were well over 20 inches. But, over the course of the first three hours we did manage to get out 8 trout limit, with one at 17", and the rest at around 19 ½ inches. All of the rest of the trout we caught ran from 20 to 22", and the largest was 26"! I lost count, as did Derek, but we bagged around 3 dozen trout.
By this time we were half was through the tide, and it was slowing down, as the fish move up out of the holes towards other cover. It was time to see if we could find some redfish. I left Derek working on a hole, but it wasn't long before I called him in on the fish I'd found. From that point on we had a total blast catching redfish. The bite was hot, and they were loving our DOA CAL swimming minnows in Stark Naked and Arkansas Glow. They weren't interested in my spoon. Derek was the first guy to out-catch me in the kayaks. He wound up with 19 redfish, and I with 18. I spent a little too much time messing around with my Kodak PlaySport camera trying to get pictures and videos, and just couldn't catch up before the bite was over. But, that was just fine, as we took home a couple of keepers out of a total of 37 reds.
It was an excellent day. Derek was a great guy, and a lot of fun, and an excellent angler. We created quite a stir back at the dock. My keeper red managed to free itself from the cheesy plastic stinger I got from Bass Pro. It's the green/yellow one with the positive locking snaps. Problem is, the plastic locking tab breaks. That stringer had already cost me a 6 pound trout, so I went on-line that night and found the Sampo original, which will not break and has no metal parts, at Sportsmans Guide.
After a day off the water I was back on Thursday with John Janick and his teenage son, Johnny. John had attempted to book with me a couple of times back in the Talon days, but we never got it to work out. We were going to finally fish, and it would be in the yaks. He was pretty excited about trying out the kayaks.
We met at around 11:30 AM. The tides were morphing into the slow, long tides that come every other week, and I knew the fishing wouldn't be what it had been just because of that. But, I figured we could catch enough fish to keep everyone happy. We would soon know which way it would go.
Out on the flats we started off slow. The tide had laid flat all morning long at about a 0.8 ft. It was now moving, but slowly. The trout were in their holes, but weren't particularly willing to eat. We worked on them for a couple of hours as the tide worked its way in, and by the time we were ready to go looking for redfish, John had 2 nice trout, Johnny 1, and I had half dozen. But, of those 9 trout we had a couple of beautiful gators.
I left the boys to go and find the redfish, and would call them in as soon as I had the first fish. It took a few minutes to get the first one to eat. I knew they were there, as two big ones followed my CAL right to the end of my rod, and the blew a big mud as they turned and ran, startled by my sudden presence there. I'd also had some half-hearted taps.
I decided to give them a bit more enticement, and got out my tub of Gulp New Penny gigs. That quickly did the job, and I was calling the boys in. We spread out about the distance of a cast from either side of me, and soon we were all in fish. Johnny had some problems getting them, but wound up with 2 redfish and a 5 pound trout. John caught 9 reds, which bested my 8 reds. So, we finished the day with 19 redfish. I was pleased with that considering the tide we had, and John seemed very happy with the day.
It was an abbreviated, but fun week with some great folks who combined to put 56 redfish and bunches of trout into the boat over two days. And, the big trout fishing was about as good as it gets.
