Monday morning, June 25th, it was quite humid when I shoved off with 5 members of the Villages Deep Sea Fishing Club. We weren't going offshore into deep water, we were going to fish the shallow waters around Cedar Key. High tide was at 11:15 that morning as we departed the dock at 8:00am. We had 3 hours of incoming tide to fish before the highest water of the day. The 1st stop to simply anchor up just outside the old shipping channel in about 6 or 7 feet of water. I call that area the Trout ranch. Nothing but grass and sand on the bottom. Perfect habitat for speckled and silver Trout. I rigged up 2 floating rigs and 2 bottom rigs,(to fish with fresh shrimp), and 2 with the Gulp rubber lure. Two guys would float their baits, and two would sink theirs onto the bottom into the live grass there. Myself and the other fisherman would cast our Gulp lures out and retrieve them with twitching, jerky movements. (Both lures and fishermen). I rigged these three types of fishing at the 1st stop to get an idea what the Trout were hitting on. Guess What? All methods got fast results.
Before long, everyone had action. I had to set my rod down so I could help net and remove fish from hooks the Trout we were catching. We had Trout coming in over the bow and the stern and the guy in the middle kept me busy too. We caught a few small pinfish that I quickly cut up into strips of bait. Good stuff. I kept the smallest ones alive for Redfish bait at a spot we would go to when the tide was highest. We caught approximately 30 silver Trout on the edge of the channel, when I anchored up to slide up to Seahorse Key next to some oyster bars and mangroves in about 3 feet of water. As we approached slowly and quietly we saw lots of bait fish flipping and flopping all around the bar. It looked like excellent conditions for a Redfish. Oyster bar with grassy bottom to draw in the small fish for the schooling Redfish. We tried floating the small pinfish live and threw the Gulp lures all around the area and laid some fresh shrimp on the bottom at the edge of the bar. No Redfish. Everything was in place. High tide, good bait, light breeze, but no Redfish. Kind of frustrating and disappointing too. Well............we had and hour left so we went right back to our 1st spot and anchored up in the Trout ranch. They were still there. Fast action right away. We threw another 20 silver Trout in the fish box and then cruised on back in. I clean my guests` fish for them every trip, so I set up my fillet table and got busy. I turn into a fish cleaning machine with 40 or 50 fish to slice up. This trip I was lucky, they gave me a dozen Trout so I only had 35 to clean. Guess what my new bride Jeannette and I had to eat that night? Whitey the cat got his share of fresh fish too. Everybody should go fishin' and take their fish home to eat, fresh. Call me at 352-486-1656 and we'll make arrangements to go out in the fertile waters of Cedar Key and fish for 4 hours and I'll provide everything. Just bring $50.00. I have your fishing license also. E-mail shanadan50@hotmail.com
Capt. Dan | 