Sweating it Out on Freshwater and Salt

I sweated it out for 3 days of fishing last week. Monday I spent a few hours at Headwaters. Water temperatures are creeping into the 90 degree mark by noon time with the heat index in the triple digits. The fish are showing signs of just how hot it is for them too as you really have to work hard for what bites there is to offer. We worked an area that has 20 foot water depths and hydrilla edges which are somewhat shallower depths.

There were two lures that provided bites for me on this day. My friend was throwing a ZMan Poppin Shad soft plastic and my two baits were a hollow body frog and a Zoom Trick worm in Bubblegum color. The frog was used by throwing it into the heavier topped out hydrilla with scattered holes and the trick worm I threw on the outer edges that had thinned out vegetation. The way I rig this worm is using a 20 pound Yo Zuri braided line attached to a barrel swivel. On the other end of the swivel I attach about a 24 inch fluorocarbon leader, 15 lb test. The hook is really important as to what water depth you want your worm to sink. I was using a 4/0 worm hook with a heavier gauge rather than a smaller thinner type hook. This enables the worm to sink down to a 3-4 foot depth. The swivel is the key to how the worm works in the water. When you give a 3-4 second pause to let the worm sink a slight twitch of the rod tip will make the worm dance in a side to side patter behind the swivel through the scattered grass. The frog on the other hand, I was using 50 pound test of the same braid and a heavy action rod.

The next two days were on the Lagoon. The first day was special as I took my daughter and grandson for a short day. There was plenty of action with mangrove snapper hitting on every cast just about. The highlight though was when my daughter had a very big(10 foot) bull shark eat a suspending jerk bait boat side which gave her a 15 minute battle. This was the biggest by far of a shark that I have seen in the area that I’ve been fishing at. Most of the others have been around the 6-7 footers. All in all my grandson had a blast. I hit the river again on Thursday and a friend came along so we worked close to mangroves throwing topwater lures alongside the bushes. We managed several small snook and to our surprise a few bigger mangrove snappers eating the lures too. Once the sun got higher and hotter in the sky we hit my little area where the sharks have been. Only saw one swim by the boat but we had tons of fun catching mangrove snapper and small mutton snapper on just about every cast for over an hour.