Fishing Report – Memorial Day

Knowing how busy the water would be on Memorial Day, we got out there early and headed to the backcountry seeing few other boats. The first creek we fished was slow so we headed towards cleaner water over grass where we found a good number of tailing reds. The reds were skiddish and spread out. We threw various artificials from soft baits to top waters and they were all turned down. The tide was fairly slack but started to come in as the day was heating up. The tailing reds slowed down and stopped showing with the higher water. We decided to head back to a bigger creek to fish the rising tide. We ran to the back of the creek and poled out into the tide. We picked up a good slot red on a subsurface bait as we waited for the tide, then we set up on a shallow trough where they often push in with the rising water. The reds started coming up the trough in groups of 3-5 fish with their heads just below the surface but they turned down or spooked from every artificial we threw at them. I pulled a few frozen ladyfish out of the cooler and chunked them in about 1-2 inch sections. We threw the chunk bait in the trough on a plain hook with no bobber along with some chummers as we could see the reds pushing in. Ladyfish did the trick and we were pulling a red out of every group that came by. They were perfectly slot sized ranging from 22-25 inches. We caught enough reds and a good snook, so we decided to head back to the dock. As we left the creek and headed out front we navigated through crowded channels of boats heading to the sandbars for Memorial Day festivities. Back at the dock by 10:30 we had a great morning with a load of reds and we avoided most of the Memorial Day craziness.