It’s All About the Fish

By: Chasten Whitfield

We started out the day late once again, as it seems by the time we get together everything we need for some time on the water fishing, it’s later than we thought. Finally, after loading our gear we got to our favorite spot looking for bait. We found some super small bait that would only get stuck in the cast net and since it was not what we had hoped for, we shook it all out of the net and moved around to a couple of other locations. Finally, after several stops we found some bigger bait on the bottom of one of our stops, which just happened to be underneath a bunch of small threadfins. We chummed up the whitebait, threw our net, and yes, this time we caught some really nice bait. Now it was on to our fishing spot. After getting to our designated spot, we threw a white bait with a bobber about a foot up on the leader in about 3’ of water along with tossing some additional baitfish under the dock. I landed our first fish, which was a really nice snook about 30” and not even 20 seconds after I cast my line under the dock again, something picked up my bait and took off with it. Still on my line, I reeled up on it to see what this fish was. After a nice fight, I was finally able to get it up to the boat and started jumping up and down – it was a beautiful redfish! Next cast was another redfish, the next cast another redfish – I was on fire! My rod with the bobber on it got hit yet again and the drag started screaming. This one sounded great! Picking up the rod and start reeling – it’s a huge ladyfish. There were a large school of ladyfish going crazy. I hooked another one, but lost it 15’ from the boat. I was messing around and started to work my hook across the top of the water and a ladyfish actually hit my hook and I was able to bring her in. She must’ve been hungry! After a great day fishing, we were losing the tides so it was time to head in. During the tough month of April, it was nice that we could still get away from it all and get out and fish!