Month: February 2017

It’s Spring (in February)

I’m not sure what is going on this year and I don’t think the fish do, either…Here it is, February 24th, and we have pine pollen in the air and azaleas in full bloom.  The waters here in Charleston never really got very cold, so we never really saw the fish get in a winter pattern.  The papers are saying we are at least 3 weeks ahead of time in terms of weather.  We are even hearing of menhaden showing up…Well, one thing is for sure, and that is we are in for a banner trout year!  I’m going on record to say that the Summerville Saltwater Anglers trout club record will fall this year (and I hope it’s me that beats my own record!)

Due to the uncertainty in the weather, the fish have been a little hard to pattern for us in our usual brackish waters that we like to fish.  They are kinda spread out, like typical March fishing, but I suspect that March will be like April and that means big hungry trout fattening up for the spawn.  Our recommendation is to keep your eyes peeled for bait fish and try to match the hatch with your size, color and profile and I think you will do pretty good.

I had the pleasure of fishing a club tournament and hosting my younger son Ian (age 17) and a new club member Grant (age 15) who has the fishing bug bad.  It was a real pleasure with these two boys, both who know how to work a lure and cast accurately.  The day-maker was Grant’s first fish while fishing off a boat – and it was a gollywhopper….a new youth club record riverine Striper at 27.5″.  This fish also would have tied the adult record by the way.  I was proud to have witnessed it.  Unfortunately for Grant’s parents, I think he’s ruined!!  Incidentally we have seen the striper busting bait which indicates the re-emergence of bait fish in the creeks.

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The Inshore Journal

If you haven’t yet checked out The Inshore Journal, it’s a really cool podcast format that has interviews and product reviews.  Recently, Episode 5 was on the subject of the Southern Redfish Cup.  It has an interview with the owner of the tour and also Ashley Lowder, who along with partner Jeremy Espiritu won over $40,000 fishing the tour in 2016 including a win and big fish in the Georgetown leg and also a win in the Championship and Team of the Year honors.  The episode can be listened to HERE and is worth a listen (it runs over an hour) but there is a great testimonial to our Trout Eye jigs by Ashley if you jump ahead to the 45 minute mark.  Check it out.

I’ve caught 100% of all my tournament fish on Trout Eye jigheads – Ashley Lowder

Shop Hours Changed

We have changed our Shop hours to Monday through Friday 9AM – 4PM.  Come on by the shop and chat about fishing and pick up some supplies.  Remember, we have a great selection of Z-Man soft plastics including some hard to find larger profiles like the 6″ SwimmerZ and 8″ MagSwimZ that pair really well with our Striper Eye jigs for jetty or reef fishing.  Some local guides have liked their performance so well that they are buying them for their charter clients to use at the reefs instead of live bait.  A single ElaZtech lure can last all day and, well, Predators Strike the Eye and the results speak for themselves!  We also have all our products including Trout Eye and Redfish Eye shirts, Original Trout Tricks, the new Trout Eye Finesse jigs, and our new Chrome eyes.

 

New Stuff, etc!

Got lots of updates for you in this latest post…

New Product Announcements

We have been working on some new things and have a couple announcements to make – and still a couple BIG irons in the fire that are not ready for release as of yet.  We will keep you waiting for those…

(1)  Chrome Eyes.  We have a new eye color, we are calling “Chrome”.  These eyes basically have a mirror background and are very shiny and eye catching.  Mirrors reflect all wavelengths equally so the thought is that they will even reflect UV at depth.  They really do look great and give our jigs an even more “high end” look to them.  But, the proof is in how do they CATCH.  Well, in our testing they catch really, really well.  Trout and redfish approved!  These are only available from us (our physical store, and online at trouteye.com) but also as another new product line, which leads us to….

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(2)  Shad Eye’s  We have heard a lot of feedback that freshwater fisher-people won’t pick up a Trout Eye or Redfish Eye because of the saltwater name.  Which is kind of ridiculous but nevertheless, we have decided to also market our full line of jigs as Shad Eyes with freshwater targeted labeling.  For now, they come in only two eye colors.  Red and Chrome.  We already know that our jigs work on ALL species of fish, fresh and salt, so this will be a chance to market them to a wider audience.

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(3)  Trout Eye “Finesse” jigs.  We had some discussions with Greg Peralta about finesse fishing.  Greg has been really successful using Z-Man TRD’s in the salt for finicky post cold-front fish.  We discussed whether we could put a smaller hook on our heads to use for smaller lures like TRD’s or the super productive StreakZ 3.75″.  The shorter shank allows the jig tail to float up and also gives it more action.  We did some experimenting and found that with some very small adjustments that we could put these into production almost immediately.  Thus, we now have the Finesse jigs for sale on our site now.  Incidentally, Greg has started a new blog which I think you will like, that gives more in-depth how-to on using these jigs at www.captgregp.com.  Check it out.

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We will have more announcements in the next several weeks with some even better stuff, so stay tuned.

Southern Redfish Cup

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The 2016 Southern Redfish Cup championship was last weekend.  25 teams qualified to compete over this two day event, and it was very difficult.  We had a cold front with high winds and a full moon tide, followed by rapid warming on day 2 with more high winds.  Needless to say, the teams had to really earn this…  Coming out on top by more than 1 lb was the team of Jeremy Espiritu and Ashley Lowder.  This win also earned them Team of the Year honors.  The win had particular importance for us, as they caught ALL of their fish exclusively using Trout Eye jigs!  You may recall that this team also won the first leg of the tour in Georgetown plus “Big Fish” honors also using our jigs.  Ralph and I earned 4th place and Big Fish in the second leg (in Charleston).  Plus, we personally know the 6th and 10th place teams were also fishing our jigs (and likely more teams that we just didn’t know about).  We are very honored that our products had a role in winning easily over $50,000 for the fishermen over the course of the season.  Really awesome stuff – we are grateful.

Ashley River Cleanup

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Last weekend we had our 4th annual cleanup of the Ashley River.  I organize this effort for Summerville Saltwater Anglers fishing club and am proud to do so.  I estimate that over these 4 years we have removed over 20 tons of trash from the river!  Well, this year, the river was remarkably clean.  We still removed a lot of trash (including 3 tube-style TV sets) but it was much more difficult to come by.  A very gratifying event to know that we have made a huge difference in the river.  Now we need to stop the source of the litter….