Sooo I know I said I would do more reports but I've been spending a lot of time fishing and traveling. Not much time in between to sit down and type out reports.

Typical summer patterns have been holding strong. Redfish are sitting REALLY shallow early in the morning. Trout are going for topwaters early and plastics in mid afternoon in 3-4' over grass. Drum are tailing hard in the shallows. Flounder fishing has been absolutely insane. I've caught/gigged 10x more flounder than ever before.

Summer break came around so I took a bunch of friends out to do some flounder gigging. Dont worry we were still 1 short of all out limits. The other 2 lame-o's got tired and took their limit in while we tried for ours.





It was a decision we regretted the next morning when we tried to wake up for offshore. Never happened. Instead we got a late start and hit Oso. Redfish were crawling around and blackdrum were tailing in the hundreds. Flounder were flying out the water around grass popping shrimp. Trout were sitting by the channel waiting for plastics.









I fished the Blue Water Kayak Classic and had a great time. Almost didnt enter until Glenn told the others I might not this year and my phone blew up. It was a Sick day with over 20miles of paddling. I Tossed back my only king early thinking I would catch more lol. Got to see Glenn and his Mahi on the water! I might not have placed but I did walk away with a brand new viking kayak in the raffle!





The next day I fished the IFA. Back to back tournaments is reeeally tough but I was really confident for this one. Storms were in the area so I hit bird island just to get my trout out of the way. I sat on the shoreline and debated if I should launch or not with lightning dropping on the beach side. I paddled out maybe 50 yards made one cast and popped a nice 22.25" trout! Way better than I had hoped.


I packed up and moved over to another location for my redfish. Weigh in was at 3pm and I have to head back by 1 to make it. It was already noon and I had caught 18 redfish with no slots. About 12PM I finally stick my hook into a nice slot but the hook comes out. Kept on down the shoreline and finally found a lower slot to put on the board at 22". I was on my way in when I came across another crawler that wanted to play. After some back and forth I finally had my decent redfish at 26.25"



I ended up placing 6th with a respectable 48.5" combined length. Not to bad considering how terrible my tournament luck usually is.

This saturday Glenn had his "Prof. salt king of the beach" tournament. I thought I was starting the day off right with a solid run on a slash bait but it ended up being a monster of a jack crevelle that went around 45".



This morning I hit the water again. I wanted to test out some new lures. First up was the new egret Mambo mullet. Reds have been taking bass assasins pretty readily. The only thing is the durability of the paddle tail really sucks. One redfish and its done. You end up spending a lot of money when you go through 15+ reds a day. If the mullet is as durable as their shrimp then I figured it would be work the higher price tag. So far I'm pretty pleased. The first one went through 6 reds until my leader found a sharp piece of shell on a big red. The second one is still ready to catch more fish tomorrow. The reds LOVE this lure. I've only had 2 short strikes and 2 fish spook. I ended the day with 18 redfish. Went back and bought another pack today incase I find that shell again.



The next lure was a savage 3d crab. I dont care too much for lifelike lures. For the most part I like to think they the fish will pick the odd one out of the school to eat. The exception comes when I want to catch some black drum. They are PICKY. Lately I've been using fiddler crabs. Black drum LOVE their fiddlers. The problem is running out of the little buggers with drum tailing everywhere. I tried the savage crab to see if it would work any better. If I kept it twitching then maybe they will pick it up. The photo doesnt want to load but they work. I suggest getting rid of the small hook they come with. Looks cool but its garbage for keeping a fish on the line. Put one on your favorite jig head and toss it up to a drum. They will attack it.

Thats about all for now. Patterns will hold until we get a seriously good cold front.

Till next time
Life is good...

Great post, Tino. Very cool cool pics. I think you need that Viking hat during a sleigh ride photo.

Congrats!....Looks like a grat time!

Solid post. Thanks for sharing.