I'll try to keep this relatively short... there's a lot to cover though.
The fishing was way under par for the Chandeleurs. A weak front made its way through late Friday evening and that made the already slow conditions even more difficult.
Friday morning was the typical "run and gun" approach. I think we all tried to hit as many spots as possible in hopes of finding fish. I couldn't keep the ladyfish off my plastics. They were everywhere! I was on a few trout in water 4-8' deep over grass w/scatterred sand potholes and was planning to continue that approach later in the evening. Unfortunately, the winds kicked up and the rain started around 6:30-7:00 pm right as the fishing would have been turning on - so we had to head back to the boat and give up early. I think my first day I turned in 6 or 7 trout. The largest being 21.75". I also brought in a couple of flounder with the biggest going around 16.5". If we had been able to fish on into the evening on Friday I think we really could have gotten into 'em.
Saturday we were greeted with some incredibly light winds and high bluebird skies. Nice weather for a picnic, but tough on fishing. The am bite was slow. We found trout but no big ones. Headed over to a cut between a couple of small islands that had some good water moving through it. I had picked up my two largest trout in this spot the day before and was optimistic I could find a few more. No trout - but I did manage to bring in a nice 27" red that hit a Texas Red Killer in pumpkin/chartreuse on a red RR'er jighead. What a fight! I was wading about belly button deep and had seen several large blacktips cruising the area when I hooked into the red. For a while I thought I had on a small shark and then he finally turned broadside and I saw THE DOT! Then I was worried one of the blacktips would hear the thrashing and come over in hopes of a quick lunch. Luckily, I was able to get the fish in shallow water and bring him to hand.
Saturday evening my buddy Ryan and I took the kayaks out to the grass flats where we had scored some trout earlier that morning. We used the skiffs to get us where we needed to go and then bailed out into the plastic.
This turned out to be the best outing of the entire trip. We both scored good numbers of trout with several in the 20-22" range. The fish were totally unphased by the kayak. We had several trout follow our plastics right up to the boat. The entire time we had large ribbonfish, hardheads, trout, and a few good size sharks swimming around beneath us. We never saw this while in the skiffs, in the yaks it was like we weren't even there.
Here are a few pics of us fishing the grass flats - notice how slick the water is. Awesome.
After a few good hours in the kayaks we decided to hop in the skiff to hit a few more spots before darkness set in.
We motored around to the opposite side of the island we had been fishing to hit another set of grass flats I had been scoring most of my fish from. All the sudden I noticed a sort of "urgency" in the birds. They started flying around and squawking with a weird sense of desperation. I looked down at my watch and sure enough we had just hit the peak of the major. I looked at Ryan and said, "Dude, we're in a good major right now." I am telling the absolute truth when I say the very next cast we both hooked up on good trout. For about the next 20 minutes it was nonstop action. About every 5 casts produced a trout. We added a couple more to the box that pushed the 20-21" mark. Very cool to see the major work like that.
The night was capped off by an awesome sunset that reflected beautifully off the slick water.
Here was our bunch of fish for the night - several of these fell between 20" and 22".
All-in-all, despite the very non-Chandeleur like fishing, the trip was a blast. I saw lots of things I've never seen before. I'm definitely going back next year and I can't wait. For anyone who has never fished the islands... start saving your pennies and get out there. You have to experience this place.
Oh yeah, my slam consisted of the following:
26.75" red
21.5" trout
16.75" flounder
That was enough to send me home with a brand new
Ocean Kayak Prowler 13! A big thanks to OK for sending along a boat for everybody to demo... and for me to take home. That gave us all a nice prize to fish for. This boat could be up for sale very soon so keep an eye out.
Also,
TALS-Fishing sent along a few wading packs to be raffled off. Here's a pic of the lucky winners:
