Whats up fish n geeks, this week I woke up early (for me) and tried my hand at some morning fishing. You’d think being a teacher / fisherman I would be a morning person, but I can’t hang. I have to admit though the majority of the time I wake up early to go fishing the juice is worth the squeeze.

This week was no exception, as the bite was hot early and stayed that way until about 10am. There has been a ton of bait in the Banana River but I have been having fun tossing around some new artificial patterns. Switching between Gulp Shrimp (I despise these baits but they do work well) and my new favorite Slay Inc Jerk Baits. The two colors that have been getting it done for me are Baby Bass and Pepper Death. The first few fish were caught early on the gulp while pitching under docks. I was able to hook up a small redfish and a couple of nice trout this way. I also caught an arch nemesis of mine, the catfish, but we won’t talk about that.

When the dock bite slowed down, I made a run to an area I have seen some nice snook before. I tied on the Slayer Pepper Death quickly hooked into a big ol girl for my area. She ended up being a 30in snook and put up a good fight. I did release her back into the wild, a lot of my friends gave me crap for releasing a slot snook, but I believe she is worth more alive than dead. Hopefully, she will grow to be a 40” and I will have the opportunity to catch her again.

As I saw Kurt mentioned in a recent report, the water has been low. The areas that have been holding redfish like docks and mangroves have perhaps gotten too shallow because these fish are no longer there. The water may be dropped from 1.5ft to 1ft, I wouldn’t think it would make that much of a difference but it seems it has. I have been having the most success around docks and mangroves with bait pods nearby.

Good luck & have fun,
Spanky =)