Mark, David, Melody (David’s wife), and I went to Breton Sounds on the hunt for Speckled Trout on July 3rd. We took my boat since I was eager to try out my new trolling motor. I hit the road at 2:30am to try to get ahead of all the other fisherman giving it was a holiday weekend. We got to the boat launch right at dawn. There were only a few boats in line, to our surprise. We quickly got into the water, loaded the boat with 150 live shrimp, and were on our way. The wind was light and the tide was out.
As we were exiting M.R.G.O. ship channel, we noticed a large folk of birds diving into the water. There was another boat fishing the birds. So, we decided to try it out. The bite started fasts and furious. On each of our first cast, we had a fish on. Unfortunately, they were too small, a crocker, or a white trout. We fished the birds for about 1 hour trying for the bigger fish. The bite continued to be strong, however we were not catching enough keeper size trout compared to amount of bait we were losing to the other fish. While the action was fun, we decide to move to try to find bigger trout.
We move to a rig north of M.R.G.O. There were no boats on any of the rigs as far as we could see. This wasn’t a good sign. We started fishing around the rig. After about 10 minutes, Mark and I both caught large Gafftopsail catch fish. We quickly packed up and moved to the rock wall along the ship channel.
There were a few boats fishing on the wall. We joined them. After a few cast, we were on the fish. Mark landed a nice Sheepshead, so did I. Shortly after that, David hooked a nice Black Drum. We trolled the wall picking up fish, here are there. As we rounded the wall, we located a school of nice specks. We started catching them on almost every cast. Suddenly, we notice a school of 6-8 dolphins swimming around the boat. They must have spooked the specks because they stopped biting. The dolphins were an awesome sight. They were launching themselves out of the water. By the time I got my camera out, the air show was over. However, they stuck around for the rest our time there. The excitement was nice, but it was not good for the fishing. The Gafftops moved in. So, we moved out.
We tried to ditch the dolphins by moving to the other side of the wall where the other boats were. However, we didn’t catching any keepers. At some point, the heat got too much for David. So, he jumped into the water for a little swim. Once, he got back into the boat, we moved back to our hot spot. A few specks returned, so did the dolphins. By this time, we ran out of live shrimp and started using plastic. We picked up a few more Specks, however the bite was slow. So, we decided to head back into the marsh to try for some Redfish.
On the ride back into the marsh, we noticed the water was high. The tide started coming in a few hours earlier. The winds had significantly picked up, too. However, it was not an issue in the marsh. We reach our favorite Redfish hole, about 1:30pm. We fished it for about 45 minutes without a bite. Then, we moved to a second spot with the same result. Actually, David had a red try to eat his cork, but could not get it to bite the gulp. Once we trolled the entire bank, we decided to call it a day.
This was a very good trip. We finished the day with 42 Speckle Trout, 3 Sheepshead, 2 Black Drum and 4 Gafftopsail Catfish. The action was steady the whole day. Better than the fishing was the performance of my boat. I had no issues with it, nothing to fix after this trip. The trolling motor performed excellent. It moved my boat with ease. The batteries never drained down. Actually, the trolling motor battery meter still reported 100% battery power when we got back to the dock. That was a very good $400 investment in those batteries.
Checkout the fishing action, the dolphins, and David’s swimming skills, most impressively his ability to get back into the boat.
