“Heads or Tails?”

Dylan’s first trout ate a Pop Shadz on a recent trip with Captain Mark Wright!

I had “one of those weeks” last week. If you fish often enough and long enough you’ll have days and weeks like this, too. No matter how advanced our experience level may be, we’re all subject to making a string of poor choices. In a nutshell I kept zigging when I should have been zagging… LOL!

One trait of a good angler is making good decisions. My decisions of where to fish and which bait, lure or technique to employ are based on years of experience fishing these waters under many kinds of conditions. Wind velocity and direction are factors which typically help me decide where to start.

Fish activity tells me whether to stay or not. Sometimes the presence of fish is no guarantee I’ll continue in an area. It’s always a “coin toss” deciding when to wait for fish in sight to turn on or will it be wise to look for fish willing to feed now.

After leaving an area holding a few fish unwilling to eat for us, I learned later I left too soon. Leaving too soon happened to me twice this past week; once in the Indian River and once in the Mosquito Lagoon. Clearly, my patience level was on the short side for these trips. Patience is something I typically have in abundance — and it often pays off.

Of the few fish we did catch, the Z-Man Pop Shadz in the Smoky Shad color accounted for several decent trout. In fact it excelled in the choppy water conditions of late morning. We even had a couple of redfish eat the plug, though they managed to pull off.