First thing I noticed was the large amounts of bait that were all over the flats with the occasional blow ups of larger fish feeding. For a few minutes I couldn't tell what was feeding but the answer to my question came quickly when I hooked this little fellow and few more of the same size. Nothing big but a nice way to start my day at a place that I had not visited in a long, long time.
Also feeding on the flats were these other guys
As you can see from the photos, the 1/4 oz Johnson Silver spoon was the main lure used but I also threw some DOA shad tails with good results. For the next couple of hours I caught a few of these small fish until the tide brought a good flush of water on the flats and along with it a large school of redfish. The huge wake could be seen from a long distance and when it got close enough, I tossed a DOA shad tail right in front of them for an instant hook up. This fish was big and it took off as if it had seen the devil. After a short fight, it broke the leader off . 30 lbs but I noticed that there was some fray from the previous snook that I didn't fix. My bad. Immediately I put that rod away and grabbed the one rigged with the spoon and on the next cast, fish on. A nice fat 27 inch redfish.
After releasing this fish it was time to locate the school again. I did have to paddle fast, and quite a bit of distance until finally I found them. Funny thing though, this time the wake was from a school of large jacks and not redfish. Of course I didn't realize it until the fish got hooked and started swimming in circles. During the fight I kept an eye on 2 wakes that were going back and forth over the flats trying to determine which one was the reds and which one the jacks. At this time I had no interest in catching jacks but only reds. For the next hour or two, I paddled like crazy chasing these fish all over the place trying to catch as many as possible. The wake from the jacks fooled me a few times which resulted in 4 or 5 nice jacks being hooked. Still I was able to spot the reds several times and that helped me catch 7 fish. All these reds were fat, dark bronze color, and none measured less than 27 inches. The largest one I estimated to be about 29 inches long.
At around 6:30, the skies got dark and a few sprinkles began to fall so I decided that it was time to head back to the launch. I was so tired from the all the paddling and catching and releasing fish in a hurry, that I didn't really mind leaving a nice school of fish behind to be caught another day.
I knew some of these late afternoon tide changes had to be better than the calm full highs in the morning.
