By: Chasten Whitfield
A friend of mine came to visit from college over the summer to do some fishing with me. We set our alarm to get up at sunrise the next morning to head out to catch out bait for the day. Once we arrived at our bait spot, we could see a lot of baitfish about 6 feet off the beach there was no wind and it was flat calm – perfect! I cast my net only one time and completely stuffed the live well. It was just in time as a small cell thunderstorm was headed our way so we actually headed back to the dock for a few minutes to let the storm pass. Once the storm passed, we got into our boat and went to our first spot where there was already a boat sitting on the spot we wanted so we ventured over just to a random mangrove area pitched some baits up and chummed. We casted bait out as we could hear more rain coming from the west. Just before it started pouring three of our rods start squealing, we all were hooked up with red fish. We could see the red tint just under the water from the red fish as all of us catching them was such perfect timing. By this time it’s now pouring but at this point no one really realized it was raining, or did anyone care! My friend Wyatt lost a few fish after that first red fish, as he wasn’t use to the circle hook. Wyatt is a bass fisherman and use to setting the hook. With the Mustad circle hook you don’t need to set the hook, just reel fast – that’s it. I can remember the first time I went bass fishing, I can’t tell you how many fish I lost from not setting the hook. We released those three beautiful red fish and threw out our lines again in the same spot and we caught red fish, after red fish, after red fish. This went on for a good hour or so and they ranged in sizes from baby pumpkins to full-grown pumpkins. Every one of those red fish was released safely back into the water what an epic hour of fishing. We actually left that spot to go try to find some snook but didn’t really make it as we got ran off the water once again by yet another downpour, however, we ended that day pretty early but definitely found the October pumpkin patch!!
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