If effort equates to results yesterday would have been a day of epic proportions. Yesterday was a marathon, literally. I fished the marsh in excellent conditions: strong outgoing tide, light winds, and an abundance of bait. I was out on the water chunking and twitching a topwater well before sunrise. I landed my first fish within minutes of fishing.
Soon thereafter I spotted the first school of the morning coming down the shoreline in my direction. I broke out the fly rod immediately. I was determined to catch some redfish on the fly. It appeared as if the day was going to be exactly what I had been craving.
I missed several shots a schools of redfish running the shore due to “redfish fever” (see video) – the angling version of the phenomenon known to overwhelm greenhorn deer hunters with nervousness and excitement. I’ve seen my fair shares of schools in my lifetime but not very many while armed with a “bug slinger”. The sensation besieged my transparent thought process and made me lose any semblance I had of proper form and casting technique. But the action was over almost as soon as it started.
Over the course of next hour I was able to spot a few more schools and more of the same story. Bad casts and more spooked fish. And then it was over. I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon covering water, one of my longest paddles yet at nearly 15 miles, and looking for sight fishing opportunities. But looking and blind casting is about all I did with only a few small fish to show for my labor.
Today was a different story, less work for more fish. I fished a completely different spot miles away with almost identical conditions except for one key point, which should have made fishing slow if not downright bad. Despite the lack of tidal movement the entire morning the fishing was better. The morning started off slow for Travis and I but after meeting up with Rick we realized that we had been patterning the fish completely wrong.
The fish were not on the shorelines but in open water cruising over sand and scattered grass at a depth between one and two feet. We started drifting open water and Rick put on a clinic landing several fish before Travis and I even got a bite. We drifted side by side with Rick throwing the same lure at the same cadence without so much as a bite. It took some time before Travis and I were able to start landing fish but once we did the bite was somewhat consistent.
With the exception of a few fish everything was landed on a TTF Flats Minnow in morning glory. We end the day with at least 20 reds between the three of us and Rick also managed to catch 5 trout early before he went searching for reds. I covered about a third of the water I covered the previous day and managed to catch more fish. The outcome isn’t always linked to effort exerted especially when you’re dealing with an unpredictable variable, nature.
