By Chasten Whitfield
My bass team mate Adam and I made a quick trip to Cortez after returning from college up in Savannah, GA. We made a quick call to my friend in Cortez to get about 200 shrimp for our fishing adventure we scheduled for the following day. When we woke up the next morning, we had to wait for the fog to lift and the weather to warm up – happens quite often in the early spring months! After patiently waiting for some time, it was time to head out for some food and to load the boat. We had our shrimp and were now ready to go, however, after another check on the weather the forecast was now showing the wind will pick up in the afternoon. We figured we better get moving before the winds came in, so we headed a few miles offshore to look for some crab trap buoys. After checking out several dozen bouys, we noticed a few small tripletail. We cast at them for a while, but apparently, they just weren’t hungry at all. After some time with not much success at catching anything, we decided to head back toward the docks to see if anything was biting inshore. This way, when the predicted winds did come in, we wouldn’t get caught out too far to make for a rough ride in – takes the fun out of fishing! We found snook along the inland waterways that were also not very hungry. We just had a cold front come through so we knew it might be a little tough fishing, and it sure was. We moved in even closer to fish some docks and hooked into some sheepshead using spider wire, 3/0 mustad hooks and shrimp. Adam caught his first sheepshead! Well, at least he got to see tripletail, snook, and even landed some sheepshead. Later that day I took him to a pond where he could catch some bass to put him back in his element and it made me realize we really do live in the best area. You can fish salt and fresh all in the same day!
