This week I decided to take my boat to Sunday brunch. So naturally, I brought a fishing pole along with a couple of my favorite speckled trout lures with me. Along the way, I found a creek mouth that was protected from the northern wind, so I decided to check it out. Upon further inspection, the creek had a lot of good structure for predator fish to stalk bait that was being pushed in by strong wind current. The creek bottom varied in depth from 1ft-4ft and had a mucky bottom, which is also good for holding heat on these colder, post-front days.

The first thing that caught my eye was a neglected dock with a mangrove shoreline nearby. I rigged up my new trusty redfish Mirrolure, and a few casts in money. The first strike came as the bait was suspending there after a long pause, it was probably sitting on the bottom. I’ve noticed a lot of my trout strikes this month have come when the bait has been resting on the bottom for a couple of seconds after my “twitch twitch pause” retrieve. A second identical sized trout came soon after, using the same retrieve method. Both fish were right at the 16inch mark, and an excellent way to start the morning. Shortly after getting on the fish I noticed a small pod of dolphins pick up on the action and make their way into the creek mouth.

I thought about making my way to a new location but the water must have been shallow enough for the trout not to mind the dolphin. The trout seemed not to mind and kept hitting my lure, and one after another I probably caught six or more trout while the dolphins were still present. I want to point out though, that if you are going to fish with dolphin present you either need to keep the fish in the live well until they leave, or release them nearshore / in the mangroves was the dolphin can’t get to them. I believe people are feeding them in hopes of a free show, and they usually put on a good one because if you don’t throw back the fish they get pretty angry. Please don’t feed the dolphin, I know they are cute and do cool tricks that impress your girlfriend, but they chase fishermen down now hoping for a free meal.

My last fish of the day was a stud / chunky 18-inch speckled trout that ended up snapping my lure as I bass flipped her into the boat. The lure snapped in two which I’ve never seen before but it is crazy the size difference between a 16 and 18-inch trout. After taking a couple of pictures, and releasing all the trout I caught into the mangroves, I made my way to enjoy some crab legs, prime rib, and bubbly beverages.