Panama City Florida Spring Break Redfish and Trout!
Capt. Rob Womble
March 10, 2009
Panama City - Saltwater Fishing Report
This week the warmer temperatures have been moving in and pushing the trout out onto the flats. The bait fish have started to get a little more active around the mouths of creeks and bayous making top –water plugs a very effective bait. The water clarity is still very good so as the sun gets a little higher in the sky site fishing the larger trout with soft plastic baits like D.O.A shrimp or any Gulp bait is working well too. We have found the trout hanging pretty close to the bayous moving in and out with the tide. Try to position yourself inside the bayou on an incoming tide and on the outside on a falling tide. If you have some live shrimp will work extremely well in this type of set-up. I like to free line the shrimp if the water is deep enough or soak them under a clear plastic cork if you want to control the depth of the bait.
Larry & Ron Freeze with their first trout.
The redfish bite is great right now. The large winter time schools of redfish are starting to thin out into smaller schools but the good news is, there is more of them. As the water temp continues to climb the redfish will start breaking out of their schools and spread out over the flats. This isn't a bad thing. When they are spread out top water plugs seem to be good locator baits and when the sun comes up site fishing the flats is the ticket. Lately we have been fishing during the lowest part of the tide. This forces the redfish out of the grass and into the open. This is when you will see them feeding so shallow their backs and tail fins are out of the water. This is when we like to use Gulp shrimp or sinking minnows Texas rigged with no weight. This will only work if you have light enough line to carry the smaller baits. We use 8lb Berkley Crystal Braided line with 15lb mono leader. This will let you cast the smaller baits a bit further. Another good lure for catching those redfish up on the flats is a gold spoon. When using a gold spoon try to downsize as much as possible. The reason I like to throw a smaller spoon this time of year is because the size of the bait up on the flats isn't very large and the smaller the spoon the less noise it makes when it hits the water so you wont be likely to spoke the fish.
I was finally able to talk Randy into letting the big guy go!
Remember the size limit on redfish is 18 to 27 inch.
Randy finally got a keeper red and a big trout.
Ron followed up the trout with his first red.
Over the last week or so the fog has been pretty thick in the mornings. When it gets like that the visibility drops way down so please drop back on the throttle a little and keep an eye out for other boaters. If your boat doesn't have a chart plotter/GPS than you should pick up a hand held GPS if you can. Several times this week the visibility was so bad that once we left the boat ramp we could not see any landmarks for navigation. A GPS is must during times like that, just remember to look up every now and then so you don't run into another boat.
As always good luck in the woods and on the water and watch out for the other guy.
Capt. Rob Womble & Capt. Todd Jones
Back Bay Adventures
Panama City Fishing Forecast:
Its only going to get better. The redfish and trout will be feeding up on the flats so get in your boat and get shallow. Seeing tailing redfish is pretty exciting!
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