Woooo its been a hot minute. I’ve been working seven days a week, which has been nice on the ol wallet but not so much on free time for fishing =(. Also my boat was down for 3+ months for repairs (thanks Yamaha, never thought that would be the issue).
Anyways, for my first trip back I went over to Cocoa Beach in the Banana river to get some slime on the boat. I showed up to the ramp at first light and started fishing the nearest mangrove line, throwing my favorite lure, the trusty topwater plug. I had several strikes from first light – to just as the sun started to show. I caught one nice 16-18 inch trout, and was able to stay hooked up on the rest. The topwater bite slowed down as soon as the sun showed (sadness). The water was not clear at all, and looked to be of pretty bad quality as well. I decided to throw a chatterbait with a gulp shrimp trailer. I thought for sure this would be the ticket, but I probably threw this combo for an hour with no success. At this time it was about 9am and I wanted to start power fishing the area again, so I switched to actually another bass bait. This time a shallow water crank bait. It casted farther than the chatterbait, and did not dive any deeper than maybe 10-12 inches underneath the surface when retrieved quickly. If you reeled it in slowly it almost acted as a wake bait. I would compare it to something similar to a mirrolure but instead of having to twitch the bait slowly you could be lazy like me and just real it in with a lot of action / rattling. I had several bites on this bait, I feel like I need to upgrade the hooks to something sharper but I still managed to boatside a nice trout and even nicer redfish.
The fishing in the Banana river this week has been really slow on artificials. It really comes down to being willing to wake up early for the first light, and being willing to cast hundreds of times to up your odds. By the time I caught this redfish it was about 10:30am and my arm was about to fall off after hundreds of casts (lol). I’m sure not fishing in months didn’t help my conditioning either.
Moving forward, I’m going to try to force myself to explore other areas that I don’t usually fish and see if it’s any better. I’m in love with the Banana river but besides a couple spots, it’s in pretty rough shape. I look forward to seeing yall again soon. Be good. <3 Spanky
Also I recently saw a video that CCA along with Jim Ross and a few other local guides helped bring 15,000 juvenille redfish to the area. I thought that was pretty awesome and I am sure will help the population. Just wanted to say thanks for the efforts!
He’s Back!!! The Patron Saint of Topwater – Alex Spanky…So I have a question, have you ever fished the Whopper Plopper? I got one for Bass fishing, but I don’t get much use out of it because there is so much vegetation to get snagged on, but it is a Snook and Trout catcher. I never have caught a Red with one, but I did have a Redfish knock one out of the water once, I guess it just annoyed him to the point where he had to strike it.
Alex! Great report man, it’s nice to see you have your boat back.