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Panhandle Fishing Report - Pensacola Bay & Choctawhatchee Bay
Capt. Eddie Woodall
November 28, 2005
Pensacola - Saltwater Fishing Report
The Running of the Bull’s is in full tilt!!!
What a great country we are fortunate enough to live in and how blessed am I to live in this wonderful area, where it’s potentially the greatest fishing in Florida.
As you read this article, it should leave you wondering -- how this can be so? To start with, on November 18th-19th I had two of my best customers and good friends Doug McClanahan and Kenny Moore here from Nashville. I set out to see if I could wear these guys out catching the Bull Reds. In two days they took pictures of 47 Red Fish - the smallest was in the 15 pound class and we had several getting up to the 30 pound class range. This number doesn’t include all the fish we didn’t land. At one time we had 4 fish hooked up at the same time and that was with just the three of us on the boat. Man what a blast!! I bet Kenny is still grinning from ear to ear as this was his first time to experience the running of the BULLS!
The big schools of fish are a bit behind schedule due to the extended warm weather period that we’ve had. Now that the cold fronts are coming through on a regular basis the schooling up of the Red Fish is definitely happening. Now is the time to have a day catching 20 to 30 of these big fish in a day!
How to catch these fish is fairly simple -- find them! If you can locate the schools of fish you will catch them in good numbers, but if you have trouble finding them then just set a couple of stretch 25’s out and start trolling them in the general area of Pensacola Pass and into the Gulf around the Pass. Keep a close eye on the bottom machine, when you mark a school of fish or hook up on the trolling plugs go back and find the school and cast buck tail jigs or lead head jigs with a 6 inch curly tail in the chartreuse color into the school and see if you can get hooked up. I use 30 pound test spinning outfits for the trolling plugs and 15 pound test spinning outfits for casting the 1/2 to 1 ounce jigs. The most productive way to locate surface feeding fish is to watch for the diving gulls, it’s not always the fish feeding that drive the bait to the surface, sometimes it may be loons. But, as always if you find the bait there will be fish close by.
One of the old-timer methods for catching these fish is to anchor on one of the sandbars around the Pass and set out a couple of lines weighted on the bottom with cut bait, Menhaden or Mullet are two of the best baits to use trying this method. A 20 pound test outfit with the appropriate weight Carolina rigged to hold it on the bottom works good for this style of fishing.
The Flounder bite has been good for the last two weeks, as they are making there migration into the Gulf to their winter hang outs. If you are a Flounder gigging fisherman then you’re in heaven right now, I’m getting lots of reports of gigger-men with their limits in a short time. For the rod and reel fisherman, use a lead head jig with a shrimp or a strip bait and try and fish the slack tides around the Pass and you will be successful.
As for the Speckled Trout, they have been trying to get onto the flats to feed up for the winter, but the fluctuation of the water temperature has kept them from being there with any regularity. November is typically the month to land a real gator but it looks like December might be the month for those big Trout this year, there are a lot of short Trout ganging up around the mouths of the bayous in the sound and the rivers to the north with a keeper every now and then. Try the top water plugs when you can, they will usually draw the bigger fish and then go to the lead heads with grub tails or the Mirror-lure 52m. The Rapala X-Rap has been very productive for me-- work the lure like a top water plug and you will get some nice Specks.
I know one thing for sure - You ain’t going to catch’em sittin’ on the couch!!
So get out there, and take a kid fishing.
Tight Lines and Screaming Drags, Till Next Time! God Bless.
Professional Fishing Guide
Capt. Eddie Woodall
Full Net Charters
www.fullnetcharters.com
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