It’s November, so, you need to make any excuse you can to get on the water.  At least that’s the way we think of it.  Ralph and I hit the water this weekend despite pretty raw conditions;  42F on the thermometer, blustery 10 – 15 mph winds out of the NE.  A recent couple cold fronts have the surface water temp down to approx 62F and this is prime time for trout.  

We started out throwing topwater plugs at dawn with a bit of a lackluster bite.  We did, however, have a few good strikes.  I was using the same red/white Skitter V plug used with much success as documented in my last post.  While we were casting I was looking at Ralph and talking about something when I had an eruption and a true gator trout on the line.  What a beauty!  Made up for numbers with quality.  I’ve tried a lot of plugs, and keep coming back to just a couple because they simply produce.  I think this Skitter V has found a permanent place in my tackle bin based on the last two trips.

We hit a second spot and had slightly better numbers but slightly poorer quality.  Any topwater bite is a good one though!  

As the sky turned brighter we switched to Trout Eye jigs and various Elaztech profiles and colors.  Our first stop produced a quality slam with an overslot redfish and gator trout included.  The gator hit a “Fladd-Shad” aka Pearl MinnowZ on a Chartreuse Trout Eye.  Being an optical engineer I believe in contrast and this is counter to the old saying “light-light”, “dark-dark”.  I like contrast, and this means “light-dark”.  I’m not saying the legions of “dark-dark” anglers are wrong, it just doesn’t compute for me.   This particular spot had very dark water, I almost forgot to mention!  

As the day went on, we found quality fish in every spot we tried – typical for November.  We did some exploring way up a creek and didn’t seem to find good numbers of trout up there as of yet.  On the other hand we did find 3 true gators in the big waters, so there you go!  

To end our day, we found a perfect Fall trout bite in shallow water with good aggressive bites coming on schooled up fish.  I was lucky to get another gator trout in this last spot.  A great day with Ralph – one that we will play back in our memories for a while.

For the day we both had traditional slams, and in addition:  Largemouth Bass, Grey Trout, Lady Fish (that was a surprise), and Lizard Fish.  Plastic color of the day was Festivus.  If you don’t have them in your tackle box, you need to.  We stock them in our shop, FYI.

See you on the water!