10.31.2011

With the Halloween coming this means the new moon is upon us. To me this means the fall low tides will be super low. In Tampa that means the water cools down the fish gets shallow and concentrated when the water flushes out of the bay. Knowing this, I wanted to get out on this fall new moon phase when the tides will be extra low.

I have known Jason Stock for several years now. Jason is the epitome of an avid fisherman. Well before he was ever a captain, he was constantly on the water fishing inshore and offshore. Fishing in bad weather, wading, kayaking, in tournaments, you name it. Anyone can pass the test and be a captain but this passion for fishing really makes for a dam good fishing guide.

Jason  has always kayak guided but have recently added  a Hellsbay Marquessa to this year. He wanted to out and do some low tide fishing with the new ride. Meeting Jason at the ramp on Friday 8am I dealt with more traffic than I thought I had to. Once we got on the water though there we were rewarded with very little congestion.

Working edges of drained flats we strictly used top water super spook jr. We find it very effective working ares with lots of bait. This time of year there is no shortage of mullet around and finding them was not an issue. In the morning we caught red fish, snook and lots of trout. The trophy fish came about lunch time however.  After I lost a big trout on top water we decided to get out and wade fish to be more stealthy.

This resulted in a Jason hooking up to a big moma gator trout. After a few more we took

If you have not caught a trout over 25″ in skinny water, they are a different beast compared to the normal 15″  fish you ski in. The fight compares more to a big snook, zig zaging with quick runs, head shakes and jumps.  Big trout are awesome and has to be at top of the list of exciting shallow water game fish.

This past Sunday I took the Ranger out to fish and shoot some video with Lauren. We needed to get some B-rolls for a fishing pilot we are working on called 3F adventures.

With tide being super low again we decided to get  a little fishing in.  At first the bite was sporadic with a few fish here and there.  Then Lauren noticed a shrimp floating by. This changed the whole game. She tied on a DOA shrimp and was getting a bite almost on every other cast.

To be completely honest, even though I use DOA swim tails I am not a big fan of using the shrimp. If you look back at all my reports I have always been using their CAL swim tails to catch fish most notably the gold rush color. So it came to no surprise I did not want to change lures.  I was being quite stubborn attributing the bite to luck. After a 6 to zero run  though I could not deny it any longer.

I changed over and started to catch some fish. We caught snook, redfish and trout for almost 2 hours straight. The bite was excellent, it was tough to put the rods down to get some photos of the big trout we were catching.

Overall DOA shrimp made the day. The colors that stood out was the Stark Naked 420. We also used a similar color with flecks and  chartreuse tail. I tried the clear one, the clear with gold specks and it just didn’t work work as well.

When the tide die the bite stopped. We finished the B-roll videos and ended the day with 30  plus fish to brag about. Next low tide tide you know what’s gonna be in my tackle box.