It's Trout Time Again !
Capt. Larry Pentel
March 9, 2009
Destin - Saltwater Fishing Report
After a long COLD winter it's finally Spring ! Speckled trout reopened the first of the month and I had a couple groups of folks take advantage of the warmer water and open season this past weekend.
I went over to Indian Pass Thurs. PM and got a couple hours of scoutin' in and caught 15 specks, a few about every hole I checked. The transducer showed a water temp of 57 degrees in the Bay, still pretty chilly. Friday morning I went out and picked up my limit of oysters and then ate a few dozen for lunch right on top of the bar they came from. Once again I have to repeat "I love oysters!", and Apalachicola Bay has some of the finest around! But back to the fishing report- I tried a couple other holes and caught a couple dozen Trout , taking my limit of 5 nice ones on back to back casts.
Saturday afternoon I took a Dad and Son charter (Sons birthday present) and went right to where they had been the day before. My folks had about 15- 20 bites pretty quick but didn't quite get the knack of hookin' em down before we shut the school off. I moved around a bit and found a tight knot of trout that my Birthday angler figured out quick and we started boating fish pretty steady. We looked around a few other spots but came back to that one for the last hour of the trip to a a real steady bite. We ended up boating 35 fish and probably missed another 75 to 80. Not bad for early spring.
The first fish of the day
The ones that gave their all for dinner!
The next day I took a couple out that fish with me pretty regular and wanted a cooler full of oysters before trout fishing so we proceeded to fill four 5 gal. buckets with the succulent critters before we picked up a rod. The trout were on the same flat as the previous afternoon and the bite got better as the afternoon went on. We fished for a little over 2 hours and boated 28 specks, missing LOTS. The water temp had warmed up to 67 degrees which I'm sure will just make the bite better over the next few days but the sudden change seemed to have the fish not as aggressive as they could have been with lots of short strikes. The water was 67 on the flats when we left, It should get to stay there with the forecast for the rest of the week. I imagine the big trout will turn on later this week and start hitting topwaters with the usual Spring abandon.
Another 1st fish of the day
And 4 of the 6 we kept for dinner!
With all this nice warm weather the cobia should be starting to think about showin' up as well. Sometime in the next 2 weeks that elusive first crabcruncher'll get caught and we can all be riding the sandbar yellin' " There's One!"
I can't wait---
capt Larry Pentel
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