If you follow fishing reports on social media, you don’t always hear about the marginal days.  It seems that recently, while the fishing is always great, the catching has been hot or cold.  I guess I’d blame it on the weather, or temperatures (both air and water) to be specific.  Seems the weather has been anything but stable – and mostly windy.  Man, I am sick and tired of the wind.  Years ago when I was a die-hard windsurfer, I would never see myself making that statement 🙂

Case in point.  Ralph and I fished the Cooper on Saturday morning and fished very hard for only a few trout and bluefish to show.  We raised the white flag at about 11am.  We were discussing the fact that we are confident enough to know that if the fish were in any way in a feeding mood that we would have gotten a bite.  Surely there were fish around, but badly turned off.  The air temp was very cold, and we were shivering in two layers.  That could be why.  Well, if the fish are gonna be that way, we both have enough work we are neglecting to waste our time beating the water to a froth, so we packed it in.

Sunday we fished in separate boats in separate rivers (Wando and Cooper).  We both did pretty well.  Ralph had approx 15 trout – nothing huge but big enough to not have to measure.  The report from the Wando was that it was very muddy which is unusual for that river.  I had a pretty good day in the Cooper with a real nice trout over 20″ followed by 7 redfish including two at just under 30″.  I managed a 15.5″ flounder to round out a pretty respectable slam of around 65″.  While out there, I decided to do a little instructional film on how to properly fish a Trout Trick.  I’ve had a lot of people ask me how to fish the TT and it’s relevant considering the latest news coming out of Z-Man…. The release of the ElaZtech Trout Trick line!  Pretty exciting stuff.  We have been fishing the prototypes for a couple months now and the new TT’s and colors are really great.  I’m especially excited about the Z-Man TT in the original color.  They did a great job matching the original color and when you see the film, you will see that they work very well.

In the mean time, I’ll get to editing the video and will let y’all know when its up.

Remember, our May promotion involves TroutEye bucktails.  They work really well, and you have a chance to win a sack of jigs just by fishing them and posting your catch pics.  Our bucktails are currently available only on our Store.  Give em a try!

 

An SSWA member, Steven, is a big bass fisherman who is relatively new to the inshore salt game.  But as I have come to appreciate, bass fisherman are usually very good fishermen.  They know how to cast, how to work an artificial bait, how to feel the bite, and how to find the fish.  Converting to salt is no big deal, because they already have the knowledge – they just need to apply it in a different way.

Steven is a fan of our TroutEye jigs and was out yesterday and had a great day.  First, he caught his personal best redfish (31″).  He caught six more and completed his lowcountry slam with a trout and flounder.  But the icing on the cake was a SHEEPY caught on artificial bait for the grand-slam!

All his fish were caught on Trout Eye jigheads.  Way to go Steven 🙂

Those of you fellow junkies who share our addition to topwater fishing will attest that there is nothing quite like an aggressive blowup on a topwater plug.  Each species of fish takes the plug in a different way.  Trout can be very eager, often banging the plug two feet out of the water in their attempt at a meal, but if you have been in this game long enough, you know that the gator trout don’t really do that…they slurp.  We hope for this kind of subtle take, as it often means you have a two plus pounder on your line.  My personal favorite to catch on top are striper.  There is nothing quite like the heart stopping, vicious strike of a striper.

That brings me to the redfish.  Reds are a blast on topwater!  Because they are built for bottom feeding it is not easy for a redfish to take a topwater plug.  In order to strike they must raise themselves out of the water or roll upside down, both of which they will do.  The result is like someone threw a bathroom sink in the water!  Fellow pluggers are nodding their heads right now 🙂  The visual of a big red coming up like Red October, pouncing on the plug, then turning away in a splash will stop your heart, and create a life long addition.

With all topwater strikes, it is important (although difficult for most) to NOT set the hook.  This is especially true for redfish.  Wait until you feel the red on the line before setting the hook.  You probably won’t need to set the hook at the red will turn and one of the 6 or more hooks will find somewhere to land regardless.

Ralph hosted Dr. Martin Toporek and John Smoak (SmoakStack Studios) for some fishing yesterday.  They found some eager reds hanging around a submerged oyster bed near a large flat.  Walking the dog over the oyster bed produced three reds over 25″.  The smiles say it all…

All pics by John Smoak of Smoak Stack Studios

They also found a few pre-front trout using the NEW Z-Man Trout Tricks made with ElaZtech material and TroutEye jigheads.  Look for the new TT’s to hit the shelves in a matter of weeks with 14 colors including the original color.

As you probably know, we are very fortunate to have partnered with Z-Man Fishing Products, a world-class fishing company right here in Charleston.  Trout Eye jigheads will be distributed by Z-Man starting in 2015 as part of their product line.  We should be seeing press releases on it soon.  It’s all very exciting for us!

Today we had Joey P., sales manager at Z-Man on the boat as our guest.  If you follow Z-Man on social media you might recognize Joey as having recently caught a 42″ redfish inshore on 10lb test and a TroutEye jighead.  He had a much bigger beard then!  Our target was trout, and we started out throwing plugs and the Z-Man Pop ShadZ.  We had a lackluster bite with Ralph landing the only trout –  We had many swirls and non-committal swipes with most of our offerings getting at least a little attention.  Still not a real aggressive topwater bite yet for us, but that will change any day now.

The sun came up and we moved locations and started fishing sub-surface.  Joey brought with him some samples, namely 3″ MinnowZ with the tails colored chartreuse using a new “special sauce” that Z-Man is cooking up.  Joey and Ralph started throwing this while I fished the original Trout Trick (now a Z-Man product as well).  It didn’t take long for Joey and Ralph to start whacking em.  I held out for a while with the TT and managed a nice trout at about 19″ but the numbers were with the paddle tails.

Ralph and I don’t often fish paddle tail grubs, instead favoring jerk shads most of the time.  It has most to do with the way we are used to working the lures.  Well, this day has awakened me to the MinnowZ.  I eventually switched over and we caught some beautiful fish on them.  Big trout (We had 4 gators over 21″ today), a 23.0″ red and  an 18″ flounder.  We were catching big trout and you can imagine the smiles on all our faces 🙂

 

We had  a really fun day.  The wind kicked up to a gale by 11AM and that is when we put it on the trailer.  Keep an eye out for Z-Man press releases coming in the next few months about Trout Tricks and Trout Eye Jigs!

 

 

 

I mentioned in a previous post how March is my least favorite month to fish, and this March lived up to that.  I’m glad it’s over.  I had a few poor trips with just 1 or a few fish to show.  Reports from some friends were similar;  one or two fish at a spot, hard to pattern, etc.  That being said, a few nice trout were caught, if you could find them.  In fact, I had one day where I found a school of trout and it was just like a fall bite, with one fish after another, all of good size.  The topwater bite is beginning to heat up and will only get better as the bait fish fill in.

Anyway, it’s April now, and that means trout are getting ready for the first spawn of the year and will be feeding consistently.  We should see reports of some of the biggest trout of the year caught in April through June.

I fished yesterday afternoon and found the trout feeding well beginning at the first drop.  Many were small males but a couple bigger females were hanging around different parts of the structure.  Pretty much everywhere I stopped I caught a few trout.  They were very aggressive and if you missed a bite they would come back a second or third time.  I eventually found a school of very nice trout, 16-18″ that were stacked up.   They were hitting suspending lures and bucktails well, but the hot bait of the day was a Z-Man Trout Trick on a gold TroutEye jighead.  This combo caught them almost every cast.  It’s fun to get in to a school of feeding trout, because  you can experiment with different lures to see what works the best.  In fact, this is exactly how Bob Sanders discovered the Trout Trick in the first place.  It was easily the best lure yesterday.

I also ended up with my first bluefish of the  year (meh) and a nice flatty at 16″.

A nice afternoon trip for sure!

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APRIL CONTEST

In the month of April, any purchase of $50 or more on our online store will be entered into a drawing for a fishing trip with Ralph and Dave.  We will make the drawing at the end of April and will post the winner’s name on our media.  The trip must be claimed within 1 year.  If you are out of town, you must arrange to be in Charleston on the agreed upon date to claim the trip. It is sure to be a fun and entertaining day!

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Our resident Bucktail tier, Rex, posted this nice red he caught on a TroutEye Bucktail

For those of you who have had issues with our online store in the past, we apologize. Our store did not reflect our product quality and we sure don’t want you worrying about whether or not your order went through. As a result, we have replaced our online store with a new and improved one. We hope that this restores your confidence in our store and we thank you for your support as we grow and strive to improve.