With October in full swing, and the water temps dropping into the low 70's and upper 60's the fishing has really started to pick up. There has been a ton of shrimp in the marsh the last few weeks and the fish are busting them like there's no tomorrow. From redfish in the bays, to bluefish under dock lights to trout on the rocks, everyone is in feed mode.
I had an evening trip set up a few days ago with a two guys who were looking to catch a few reds. The morning of the trip, we got a big cold front and gusty winds along with a 70% chance of rain. We made the call to hold off until the next morning, once the rain had past. I met Chris and Lee at the ramp and we made a run to a nice low tide redfish spot. The wind and rain had the water pretty muddy, but I hoped with the low tide we would be able to see the pushes from any redfish moving through. Within a few minutes, we started seeing signs of fish working through the mazes of marsh grass and oyster beds. Not long after that, Chris was hooked up on his first fish on a topwater plug. From there we continued to see good numbers of fish working around the skiff as we poled forward. We made our way into a very shallow bay that sometimes holds good numbers of fish. As we approached, I could see seagulls working a few feet above the water and I knew something good was about to happen. The gulls were catching shrimp that were being tossed up by feeding redfish right below the surface. I poled up to the birds and we could see a dozen or more tails breaking the surface with just as many making swirls right below the surface. Lee's first cast into the school was immediately inhaled. The school split, but was reformed and feeding on the other side of the bay by the time Lee got the fish to the boat. We wasted no time pursuing the reds and continued to hook up on fish as they busted shrimp. We fished a second creek afterwards and found mostly rat reds, which are a welcome sign for next years season.
A few nights later, myself and a buddy were out cast netting shrimp when we ran past a lit dock
with fish busting shrimp underneath. We had our hearts set on catching some speckled trout, so we made a quick run back to the truck to grab some fly rods. We got back to the dock and made a drift past the outer edge of the light and chucked our flies up into the light. The hookup was instant, but unfortunately what we hoped to be trout were actually bluefish. I'm not too picky about what species of fish I'm chasing as long as they are willing to eat and put a bend in the rod, so we anchored up and spent the next half hour catching bluefish on every cast. We called it a night around 11pm and ran back to the dock.
I got a call from my good buddy Chuck yesterday evening with an invite to go chase some albies and maybe a few gray trout the following day. I'm not one to turn down an invitation to spend some time on the bow of the boat, so we made plans to meet before daylight the next morning. The albies have been on one day and off the next lately, so we decided to check out a rumored gray trout bite at a rock jetty while we listened to the radio reports to see if the albies were eating. The albies never materialized, but we were able to hook into a good number of gray trout along the rock jetty. The 5wt's and sinking lines got quite a workout from about 7am until noon when we called it a day.
