Panhandle - Panama City, West Bay & Port St. Joe
Capt. Rob Womble
July 21, 2007
Panama City - Saltwater Fishing Report
Another Big Week for Trout an Redfish!!!
This week the tide has been moving in a little later in the afternoon leaving most morning flats fishermen scrambling towards their deep water patterns. Well they are all right. When the tides are lower in the mornings you need to push away from that shallow in the grass pattern and change it up a bit. Last week we started fishing some of our deeper flats looking for prop scares, pot holes, depressions, sand bars, sand mounds and deeper channels between the marsh islands. Topwater plugs have still been working the best. Lately we have switched up and started using a louder plug like a Top Dog or the Skitter Walk. The reason we switched is because the trout and redfish are hammering schools of bait up on the flats. With all that bait to choose from we want them to see and hear ours. Try to vary your retrieve from quick to slow to a pause from time to time....and obviously you will want to stick with the retrieve that works the best.
All last week as the sun started to poke out we switched up to Gulp jerk baits and keep on throwing at all the same spots as you would with the topwater. Work it slower and allow it to drop from time to time. Long distance cast are the key with this bait in these types of conditions.
Capt. Todd has ran a lot of afternoon charters last week choosing to wait for the higher waters. This worked out well for his customers. Do to the higher winds he primarily used the Cajun Thunder Popping Cork rigged with 3” Gulp shrimp and worked the 2' to 3' drop and hammered the trout. He also managed to use topwaters and Gulps to land some nice gator trout and several nice redfish well into the upper side of the slot limit. I choose to run my charters in the morning and used topwaters and we also hammered the trout and redfish. On one of our trips we landed a couple nice trout around 3 to 4 lbs and one at around 6lbs.
I would like to say thanks to my good friend Brian “Z” who just recently returned home from the war. Thanks for doing the tough jobs that most people can't ever imagine....and thanks for coming to Panama City only days after returning home and visiting my family and enjoying several awesome days of fishing with me.
Now I could tell you how many and how big our fish were but I will just show you a couple pictures of some of the trout and redfish we boated this week.
Finally.........I have been hearing some reports about a guide or two out there really coming down on the new or part time guides in our area. Well I will tell you this....our sport is like any other sport in the world, you need some new talent from time to time to keep the new ideas and techniques coming in. Also I feel that a majority of the time the new guides bring that still excited to be fishing attitude that too many long time guides can sometimes loose when it becomes a full time job. To those new guys and part timers out there....I'm sure there are a lot of veteran guides in our area like Capt.Todd and myself who will welcome you into the business and look forward to working with you on the water. Until next time good luck on the water.
Capt. Rob Womble & Capt. Todd Jones
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