Capt. Brooks Catching Fish In Windy Winter Weather

I finally had an evening trip this week with two clients. The clients couldn't cast for beans at the beginning, but after a few lessons and practice… they were way better at hitting our target areas.

With a front approaching at around 7pm this evening, we had strong southeast winds that really uprooted a bunch of sea grass. It was hard to retrieve baits without picking up a bunch of grass and killing the bait's action. The grass was covering the bait totally in many good places that were holding good numbers of redfish and a few speckled trout here and there. Both species were following the baits but wouldn't strike it, they knew something was wrong! The clients all watched cast after cast, really thirsty for the hit that just wasn't happening.

Eventually we had to leave the area, which was sand and grass beds around 18-30' deep. We headed off to areas more protected from the wind. We found some areas with the same bottom structure and depth, but had scattered oyster shell and not as much floating grass. There were not as many redfish here, but the size was better overall.

Because the water was too clear to throw darker jigs, we opted for a Pink Hologram Devil Eye on a 1/16 oz. TruLoc jig head, and decided to jig the baits slowly up and down to see if we got a strike. It didn't take long to see them striking at the bait and the clients saw them start following the rig because the water was so clear, but they were retrieving it too fast to hook the redfish. Once I told them to relax and let the bait get in front of the fish, wait until you feel the strike and THEN set the hook, and shortly after that, the redfish started sucking their fishing lures down like they were candy.

Five of them got their limits of reds in the 24" to 26.5" range. All of them were hooked deep and solid, there was no way that they were getting off!

Next, we hit a channel near some descending flats that was sand and mixed grass beds, to try for some speckled trout. The color we had been using was a bit sandier and we tried using the same action but the clients that were rigged differently, one with a Root beer Devil Eye and the other with a Strawberry one were getting all the hits, from pecker heads to 21 inches and there were a lot more where those came from.

The holes on the flats held the largest trout but there were not as many of them as there were smaller, keeper fish that were holding on the drop off to the channel but were still some nice looking fish. In less than 4 hours, they had a lot of action counting the ones they released and they kept 14 of the speckled trout!

Part of the success had to be attributed to the new TruLoc jig heads, because they have some great quality, sharp hooks!!! We didn't lose a single thing because of the hooks, but lost tails from two of the lures because of the way those redfish were sucking them in and no other worm could have done any better with the abuse those fish were dishing out.

Captain Robert Brooks is a licensed fishing guide who specializes in wadefishing for big speckled trout and redfish on the Gulf Coast using salt water fishing hookss. Robert recommends that you try out some fishing hooks from Brown Lures for your next fishing trip.