kayak report

Happy Tuesday SpaceFish Family,

So this past week saw a cold front push through, and then strong north winds in the days that followed. I was able to go out and fish Saturday morning, I was going to return to Long Point to do a spot report there, but I ended up changing plans and fishing the Banana River in the Thousand Islands off of Cocoa Beach due to time constraints, and the need to make a Lowe’s run after fishing for a home project we were working on this past weekend.

With the winds, the drop in temperature, and dirty water, this place fished totally differently than how it had fished back in the early summertime. I struggled my first two hours on the water, not even getting a bite. I wasn’t seeing any signs of life on the surface. There was no bait being busted or chased, no birds wading and looking for bait so I had to switch to some fundamental “get bit” tactics.

So that’s what I am going to talk about on this report. How to make the necessary changes on the water to avoid the skunk on a tough outing to get bit. Let me make a quick story/analogy here:

A few years ago, in 2018, I was a first year Head Football Coach at Lake Weir High School in Ocala, FL. We entered the 10th game of the season with a 6-3 record, and had a chance to win that final game and make the state playoffs for only the 3rd time in Lake Weir’s 65 years of football history, and we felt that if we went into the playoffs we would have a chance to make history and win the school’s first ever playoff game. There was a lot riding on this game! We were a high flying, spread offense averaging over 400 yards, and 40 points per game, our QB was on the cusp of breaking the schools passing yardage and passing TD’s records. On the day of the game, all hell broke loose weather wise. During warm-ups we got a good ole North Florida rain storm, the wind was blowing, it was raining sideways, the field flooded into a muddy soup, and on top of all of this, the temperature was down in the low 60’s! Not a night to throw it around. We ended up slowing down our tempo, got into bigger personnel groupings and ran the football en-route to a 35-6 victory. The next week we went on to win our playoff game and broke our passing records on a dry and warm night in Pasco County. The moral of the story is sometimes game plans and preferred tactics have to be put on the shelf, and you may have to go low and slow, and do what you gotta do to be successful.

So what is the grind it out approach to an inshore kayak angler? For me it is fishing a shrimp lure near structure, and with a bass angler’s approach – the ned rig. The ned rig allows you to “dead stick” a bait, meaning you don’t even move it, let it sit on the bottom and let the ned rig sit the bait up. I fished two shrimp lures this weekend. The Gulp! Shrimp in New Penny on a Z-Man Pro Shroomz 1/4 oz Jig head, and a Salt Strong Power Prawn on a Big Bite’s Baits Weedless Ned Head in 1/4 oz. Since these jig heads came from my bass tackle box, they were both in green pumpkin color, which is one of my default bass colors for trick and finesse worms.

My top-waters, paddle tails, and jerk baits didn’t produce, but the ned rig shrimp presentation ended up allowing me to catch 5 Speckled Trout, 2 Redfish, and 1 Black Drum to salvage a tough day. None of the fish were big or worth writing home about but getting tight lines and avoiding a skunk certainly made the outing more enjoyable! The other thing that I think helped turn on a tough bite was scent. One of the reason I love Gulp! Shrimp is because of the scent, the knock on the bait is it is soft and tears easily, I am lucky to catch more than 1 fish per bait. The Salt Strong Power Prawn is made out of TPE plastic, it moves in the current while dead sticking and lasted over several fish. It rigs well weedless and even has an insert for rattles! I put on some Dr. Juice scent to increase the odds of bites as well. I really like this bait!

I hope this report helps those of us weekend warriors that get 1-2 chances per week to get on the water. Sometimes the bite is tough and finicky and no one likes to come home empty handed. If you fish artificial shrimp lures, I highly suggest trying out a ned rig jighead to fish it on!

I hope everyone has a great week, and may many tight lines be in your future! Until next time!