The fish are back from their winter hideouts. The water temperature is up to 70 degrees. The trout are swarming all over the Cedar Key mangrove and oyster bars and out on the `flats`, the 4ft to 6ft sandy grassy bottom. Its real easy to catch a few and take `em home for a great fresh fish dinner. I fish with light to medium tackle. 15lb test line and a quarter oz. sliding sinker and a size 3 golden wire hook. All the tackle shops have that stuff. First I slide my sinker, (it has a hole thru it), onto my 15lb line coming off the end of the rod. Then a small swivel to the end of the line. Now the weight should be on top of the swivel. Then I cut a piece of leader line (25lb or 30lb) about 1 and a half feet, and tie it to the bottom of the swivel leaving the last end ready for a hook. Tie the hook onto the end of your leader line and you have a strong light rig that`ll lay down in the grass and be light enough for those trout to pick up easily and swim off with your hook in their mouths. I get a few dozen live shrimp and keep them in a ziplock bag in my cooler. You don`t have to keep them alive. They MUST be fresh though. They will stay good in my cooler for 5 to 6 hours. I don`t even carry a live bucket. I don`t just run a hook thru the side of my bait shrimp, no, it would take only a small nip from a trout to snatch the whole thing right off. I start the hook on the underside of the shrimp and at the tail and hold the hook steady and push the shrimp over the shank of the hook and the tip of the hook should come out. I`m trying to hide the shank of the hook inside the shrimp. After you`ve strung him up you hold your leader line in front of you and the shrimp should be upside down. I show folks how to rig up a fishing line all the time. Its pretty simple once you`ve done it a few times. We caught 18 trout yesterday. I placed in a ziplock bag 36 fillets of fresh trout for my guests to eat up. The first picture is of Cal Swenson holding an 18in. speckled trout. They came all the way from Wisconsin. Very cold and snowy back home. It was beautiful out fishing on Friday the 13th. Not a bit of bad luck. The second picture is of Jennifer and Jessie Hughes from Tampa with a 21in. speckled they caught together a week or so ago. Folks, we`re just starting in on this fishing season and it looks like they are real hungry. Jeannette and I are eating the 1st fresh trout dinner since the fish came back. Redfish and mackeral and cobia coming soon. If you`d like to go fishing with me aboard my 24ft pontoon boat, please call me at 352-221-5463 and I`ll fix you up. Go to my web site www.inshorefloridafishing.com and check out the pics there. Thanks, Capt. Dan | 
