March Fishing

If I had to pick a least favorite month to fish in Charleston, it would be March. The rapidly fluctuation, and mostly warming, water temps seem to have the fish in between patterns. The trout are not quite yet getting ready to spawn so they are not super aggressive. I seem to struggle more in March than any month.

I’ve had a lot going on recently and can’t fish this coming weekend, so I decided to play hooky and fish yesterday. Forecast 80F and windy: 15 kts and gusty. You can always hide in the creeks and that was my plan. I had low expectations and hit the water with a plan to enjoy the warm air and catch just one fish.

My first 2 hrs on the water resulting in not even one bite. I kept moving and trying to find a pattern, and eventually caught a rat-red. From there on, things improved. Shortly thereafter I caught a 22″ red and after that I got a nice ‘tick’ and a screaming run. It turned out to be the fattest striper I have ever seen (or caught). It was 24″ and 7 lbs, now that’s a football! Turns out it was not a full belly as I had originally thought, but rather it’s a male fat with sperm (thanks to my friends who striper fish the lakes for this information). He hit a gold TroutEye jig on a Gulp jerk shad.

Striper1 Striper2 Striper with Jig

I threw a bucktail tied on a TroutEye jig in this same hole and caught a 25″ red on it. We have been experimenting with the classic bucktail tied on our jig heads and they seem to work really well! We are not sure if we are going to make this a product or not – we’ll see.

IMG_20150304_124438219 IMG_20150304_130710051

Around another corner I had 3 strikes and misses on trout. I tried a variety of baits and guess what sealed the deal? Yep- a bucktail. Ended up catching 6 trout – all keeper size. I kept one and released the rest.

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This has proven to be a “killer combo” – our Gold TroutEye paired with a Z-Man 3.75 StreakZ in Ralphs Shad color

Totals for the day:

  • 5 reds (to 26″)  4 reds tagged and released.
  • 6 trout (to 17.5″)
  • 1 football striper (24″, 7lbs) fin-clipped and released.

Needless to say, my expectations were far exceeded!  It was a fun day despite the strong winds and dirty water.


 

In other news, we have delivered our first order to Z-Man and you should start seeing Z-Man branded TroutEye jigs in stores and media soon.

Joey from Z-Man spent a day fishing in Tampa with C.A. Richardson from Flats Class TV recently, and they had some good things to say about our jigs.

flats class

Tight Lines Everyone
-Dave

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