Panama City Redfish
Capt. Rob Womble
July 8, 2008
Panama City - Saltwater Fishing Report
First of all I want to welcome Capt. Mike Pankey of Hanky Pankey Charters to Cyberangler. Mike is new to Cyberangler but a long time guide to the area. He specializes in live bait fishing for big trout and redfish. If you want a extremely fun low impact live bait fishing trip with a guide who has an unmatched knowledge of the local waters and a great personality give Capt. Mike Pankey a call. Welcome aboard Capt. Mike.
That leads me into my next topic this week. Specialized fishing, there are guides who chase after whatever swims in the bay, and there are guides who specialize in certain critters. Both are just fine, you just need to know what your getting into. Capt. Todd and I specialize in Trout and Redfish , with artificial lures. The exception to that rule is the tarpon run during the summer when we target the tarpon with live bait. That's pretty much all we do. Every now and then we will catch a Jack, Spanish, Pompano, Blues, and others, but we mainly target Trout and Refdfish with artificial lures. What that means is we won't drive you around the bay looking for bait (on your time) or sit you up on a chum slick waiting for the fish to show up. Now that type of fishing is pretty good and you will catch fish…….just not with us. We can recommend so really good bay guides who do that.
Next I would like to cover a couple things concerning the tides. I have received a couple e-mails asking about fishing high, low and moving tides. Here we go. This time of year we like to fish the moving tide if possible. This means if it is moving in the middle of the day (heat) it will be moving without me. If it is moving in the morning or late afternoon we will fish it. Target the outside of the creeks and bayous, this is where the bait will travel in and out of the marsh with the tide. This is where you will catch them. I read that the high tides make it harder to catch trout……well……..we will just let that be their secret. As for us, we have been hammering the trout during the high tides. You have to get that boat shallow and know what marsh to throw your bait in but I can promise you the BIG trout are still biting during the high tide. We won't use the high tide as an excuse for not catching trout……we have much better ones that we use when needed.
High Tide Trout!
OK pictures. I read another posting that criticized Capt. Todd and I for appearing in too many of our posted pictures. You know we take a lot of customers who play golf, as they should if they want. If I ever wanted to pay someone to take me on a guided golf trip I would hope my guide spent a majority of his or her time on the golf course. When Capt. Todd and I aren't guiding trips we like to spend our spare time on the water with friends or on scouting trips. This usually results in our catching fish and taking pictures of them. As a result we post them on OUR fishing report, and finally on this subject, you will notice we usually post pictures of our customers holding one or maybe two fish at a time. This is because a majority of our customers are catch and release fishermen. This means we catch a fish, take a picture, release the fish and repeat. We prefer not junk up the front of our boat with barley legal trout and Spanish. However if it will make some of our readers happy, here is a picture of more than one fish at a time. Enjoy.
The Redfish bite is still going strong. Stay with what works. Topwater in the early hours and spoons and soft plastics in the later morning. Don't count out the spinner baits. Terminator with a willow leaf blade and green body has been working pretty well. The trout have been biting on the topwater plugs as well, but you need to have a popping cork rigged up with a ¼ to 1/8 oz jig head ready to go. Rig the jig so it falls just above the grass and when you pull on the line it should look like a shrimp popping up from the grass.
Another accidental Spanish!
For those of you who travel to Panama City on vacation and want to hire a fishing guide I have a few recommendations. Check your guide out. Just because your potential guide has a website does not make him reliable. You can call the Department of Fish and Wildlife and ask if he or she has any fishing and or hunting violations. I would also contact our local tackle shops, Half Hitch Tackle 888-668-9810 or Howell Tackle 800-423-8954. They deal with the local guides around here on a daily basis. If they don't recommend your choice of guide, well you might want to think twice before hiring him.
As always, goodluck on the water.
Capt. Rob Womble & Capt. Todd Jones
Back bay Adventures
Panama City Fishing Forecast:
The fishing will continue be good for the next couple months, and yes you will even be able to catch BIG trout during high tide....I promise.
More Fishing Reports:
