[dropcap]S[/dropcap]callop season is winding down and the kids are back in school. Mullet are in big schools fattening up for the fall run and the porpoises are fattening up on the Mullet. All of these things are signs that September is here and fall is right around the corner. Fall cannot come soon enough this year. It has been steaming hot all around the Nature Coast.
In years long since gone, the old timers would tell me that the Full Moon in September was the prime time to catch trout coming inshore after being gone for the summer to spawn. The areas that we scour first are the flats south of Gomez Rocks. Yes, I know, this is the scallop grounds. Full moon is the night of the 9th and scallop season does not end till the 24th. Trout will have to come throughout the scallop fleet to come inshore, but the scallops are starting to get slim, to say the least, on the Crystal River side of things. This should limit the crowd of boats in the area, hopefully. I’ll be targeting trout with a popping cork tied to about 24inches of Fluorocarbon leader and one of Jim’s Jigs underneath, tipped with some kind of soft plastic. I’ll throw everything in the box till I find the one that they are hitting the best.
Last month I went to the ICAST with Okuma rods and reels, and Savage gear. Congratulations to Savage for winning best in show with the new soft crab that will be coming out late this winter. If you haven’t seen this bait, look them up; they are incredible. They also have some top water and swim bait lures that work well on redfish, snook, and trout. We spent 3 days testing products after the show with Mike Bennett from Okuma, Mads Grosell from Savage Gear, and Joe Everett another product tester for Okuma, like myself. We had a 33inch redfish slam an 8-inch swim bait. I would not have believed it if I had not seen it with my own eyes. After that, I wouldn’t let Mads off of the boat with that bait. I hijacked it from him before he left for Denmark. The swim baits are gonna be deadly on the Tarpon run next spring.
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