This report could get a little long winded as I have been fishing my way through both kidney stones and a kidney infection (what's new?) at the same time and the bed has been a more welcomed option than posting a report each night. If you like catching redfish, it cannot get any better than it has been for the past week or so, but I haven't done as well with the trout. I haven't been trying to keep this bite a secret...I was just a little tired.
You tend to forget the aches and pains with another good one on the line!

I have no idea what to expect for the remainder of the month as nothing we usually do in December is working the way it should. I am still catching far more big trout in the ICW than in the lake in spite of the fact that the water could not be much prettier from Coffee Ground all the way to Garrisons. For that matter, I am not even catching great numbers of reds on those flats yet, but they are all over the river and the ICW.
Even the bad days have been pretty good lately.

It is probably easier to start with today's trip and work backwards. We easily had our worst day of the past week and still caught some solid trout, 2 flounder and 27 redfish. Up until today, we have been catching that many redfish per hour!
It was cold and overcast with a stiff east wind and a super thick fog all morning. The tide wasn't as strong as it has been and we saw very few gulls in the ICW early. The fish were still holding around the drains, but we never caught the first red on the shallow flats and we had been absolutely slaying them in 2 to 3 feet of water.
Every time I turned around Keith was fishing a different lure, but the redfish obviously liked this one the best!

I stayed with the Flats Minnow and a Swim bait, but Keith caught a limit of upper slot fish on a crankbait made by Strike Pro. I have no idea what it is called, but it runs about 3 to 5 feet and every red he caught inhaled it. I try not to watch him fish because he changes lures every 10 to 15 casts just for the sake of changing. I guess he looks at all of those lures in his store (Daley's Fish N Hunt) all day long and decides to fish every one of them if he ever makes it to the water. He also brought along an arsenal of Laguna rods and Shimano reels and managed to fish with every one of them as well. His wife, Megan, says that he is his own best customer!
The water temperature was back up in the mid-fifties after cooling off some the prior two days. The outgoing tide initially sucks all of that cooler water out of the marshes and it takes a day or two to mix with the warmer water in the bayous.
We caught and released huge numbers of reds in a lot of different areas all weekend long and the bite just continued to get better until today. I had a two boat party yesterday and God only knows how many redfish Jimmy and Wally caught and released between 11and 1 o'clock. We were already limited when I put the Stake out stick down on a shallow flat and from that point on at least one of us had a redfish on virtually every cast.
Jimmy and Wally caught and released reds like this one for two solid hours!

We could have easily limited on trout in the ICW as well, but they had redfish on the brain and we left a very good bite after catching 7 keeper trout in a matter of minutes. Wally wore us out early with a chicken on a chain Flats Minnow and Sea Shad, it didn't seem to make a difference, but I picked up one big trout on a Tidal Surge Split tail mullet and when the reds began eating it as well we all tied one on. We didn't experiment any more after I later caught five reds on consecutive casts with a Stinky Pink Sea Shad and that was the only color we fished during that 2 hours of madness.
I have no idea what to expect tomorrow as the bite today threw me a curve. I think we are going to get more cold and overcast, but I sure hope that they return to the flats as that is an incredible bite. Its hard to bitch about catching 27 reds, but we felt like we were having to work for them today after a week of just mindless casting and catching almost everywhere we fished.
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