Great charter with Lee Allen of Maryland on 2-6-2012. Good Redfish action on top water plugs.

Great event held by the guys at paddle-fishing.com. The PFTS #3, “The Tackle Box” was held January 28 2012 in the Fort Desoto area. The fishing was good. Manages to take home the 1st place prize for largest Trout. Caught many good Trout throughout the day but could not get any Red’s to the boat.

Another great charter this morning with Mike & Heather of Dunedin FL. They wanted to target Snook and that we did. Mike’s first Snook of the day went 36″ and Heather’s went 27″. There were a couple more smaller Snook and 1 Largemouth Bass as well. The Snook are Chewing good!

The new year started off right for Brian R. Brian caught and released 11 Snook to 28″. All the Snook were caught on artificial baits.Look for the Snook to be in the back water creeks & canals and feeding before each cold front. Make sure to slow the baits down to get the bite.

Jim and I got an early start on Dec 29 . The winds were finally cooperating for his trip. We spent most of the day searching and sight casting Redfish in the shallow pot holes. The water was gin clear which made the Redfish very spooky. The bait of choice was the Riptide 3″ Mullet in Golden Glow.

The Trout are on fire now as well. Once you find them it seems they just don’t stop eating. look for them to be in the deeper grass.

Great morning on the water despite the cold front bearing down on us. The fishing was very slow do to the weather but we made the best of it.

Great day today fishing the Paddle-fishing.com Tournament. Flounder,Snook,Redfish and too many Trout to keep count of. Special Thanks to Rip Tide for supplying the lures for the event. 62 anglers fished the event. There were only 7 slams turned in. I was very pleased that I was able to be 1 of the 7 although my fish just didn’t measure up.Fished  unfamiliar waters  and still had good productive day on the water.

It was a cold and windy morning for Lisa & Donnie. We launched just as the sun was rising on Little Sarasota Bay. Conditions were not ideal but we pressed on. The bite was pretty slow but they still caught a few fish. Flounder ,Lady Fish and Trout to 23″ caught on Rip Tide soft plastics and Gulp shrimp under a popping cork.

 

On Sept 24, 2011 Steve Gibson of Team Florida Paddlesports participated in the Indian River Paddle Classic. This was the tournaments 3^rd year with 60 anglers participating in the event. The IRPC proceeds again went to support Coastal Charities, Inc., a not for profit organization.  Coastal Charities supports activities encouraging youth to discover the great outdoors!  Previous donations allowed them to give 100% of Tournament Proceeds back to the community!  If you would like to learn more about coastal charities and what we do visit the website at www.coastalcharities.org .

Results:

SLAM
1st Richard Zaremba
2nd Dilan Arnold
3rd Mitch Roffer

RED
1st Steve Gibson
2nd Doug Fisher
3rd Joyce Myers

TROUT
1st Nick Dyroff
2nd Jose Vidal
3rd John Dobbins

Lady Angler Award Elaine Christian
Jr. Angler Award Owen Wetzel

Doug Fisher and I loaded up and headed over to the east coast for the Indian River Paddle Classic this past weekend. We attended the mandatory captains meeting on Friday night at the local Strike Zone tackle store. After the meeting, a few beers and lots of fishing conversations we made our decision on where we were going to fish.

We woke early Saturday morning and headed to the NMZ (NO Motor Zone) to find that we had the entire launch to ourselves, which at first discouraged me a little. I was wondering if I was making a wrong decision. The one thing I have learned when it comes to tournament fishing. Always go with your original plan. We launched just as the sun was rising only to find that there were going to be a few challenges on the way. It wasn’t 2 min before we spotted our first obstacle. Manatees! I have been fishing for a long time; I have seen Manatees before but nothing like this. As far as we could see were Manatees there must have been a thousand of them. We had to stick close to shore to pass by them which gave us our next problem. Gators! I have seen Gators in the NMZ before but these guys were huge. Averaging 12’ +. They were all lying in that foot of water that we were paddling in. An hr later we made it to our fishing destination. In the end all the chaos paid off. We found some really nice Redfish that put Doug and I in the $. The Trout we couldn’t find. I took home the 1^st place prize for largest Redfish and Doug took home the 2^nd place prize for largest Redfish.

The wildlife in that area is unbelievable. If you get the chance, head to the IRL (Indian River Lagoon). It’s a beautiful fishery and there are many kayak guides in the area that can put you on the fish.

Steve Gibson

Team Florida Paddlesports

www.shallowpocketsfishing.com

John had a great trip earlier in the week and decided he wanted to do a second 4hr trip this morning. We launched just before sunrise & hit a couple of dock lights in search of some Snook. Shortly after we set up on a near by oyster bar where he caught a couple more Snook and Redfish. The top water bite was great for a very short time. There were some massive blow ups on the Spook and Skitter Walk. Just couldn’t get a hook in these big donkey’s for some reason. It happens! We pressed on after the bite slowed and changed up to soft plastics. John ended up with 3 Redfish,4 Snook & bunch of Trout. Not a bad morning considering we had 100mph NE winds on Sarasota Bay.LOL