[McLovin]

Charge your phone lol!

I tag pretty regularly. I tag more redfish than trout just because there is usually more time between bites since the fight is longer. I’ve tagged 251 fish, 90 this year. Total of 10 recaptured.

I sure hope someone is using the data and it is helping make good decisions in fishery management.

[McLovin]

Yeah that makes sense to me. I’m sorry though, I think my message was a little unclear. I’m not looking to target them, but I did enjoy the surprise bass every now and then. I was just trying to understand what has changed. My understanding is that they can survive in salinity around 10-12 ppt and I had read that brick lagoon had averaged 4 ppt and stump lagoon around 9 ppt in the 60s prior to the MRGO being dug.

It just didn’t seem like the salinity in the interior marshes had shifted significantly in the areas I fish normally and I was just trying to wrap my head around it.

Venice (being the only place I will go out and “target” them by flipping canes) seems like a different animal since while it was impacted by the salt wedge, it still never saw salinity levels go sky high – I think the worst of the wedge got to around 1-2 ppt downriver.

[McLovin]

I see you said the orange routes are questionable. I have run the first bayou you have off the west side of south pass. It’s pretty easy to stay in the channel as long as you have good light all the way until you get to where everything converges together. I just stopped and fished my way through but there was definitely enough water in most places. I still wouldn’t run through there WOT even with my tracks lol. It’s a little sketch but definitely doable.

[McLovin]

That is awesome, I knew there were gulf sturgeon but have never seen one. Would be so awesome for that fishery to be sustainable one day. I’d imagine a big 7-footer can make a lot of caviar!

[McLovin]

I’m sure they are running, maybe just a weird day. The only birds I even saw were where snail bay drains into hackberry bay. Also, if you are ever in the area I highly recommend staying upwind of the platform circled. It has to be more bird poo than steel lol.

Yeah first ones! I fished a fly rod for bluegill and one bass as a kid. Picked a 5 weight back up for a whopping 4” wild brown trout in gatlinburg this summer and decided to try an 8 weight out for redfish! Just haven’t been consistent in bringing it along lol. The first one went completely fubar but the second red looked liked I had done it before!

[McLovin]

When you say seal, are you talking about your rubber gasket for your fill and drain screws? Or your oil seal behind your prop?

If it were me, I’d probably do just what you said. Check it after a couple of trips and if you don’t see milky oil then it likely was just a failed gasket on one of your screws (assuming that’s what you meant). If it’s that black every time you change it out, I’d probably change the frequency that you are replacing the gear oil. I think most manufacturers say 100 hours.

[McLovin]

I’d venture that braid is always going to “bite” into the flouro/mono, where your hook end is being tied to a smooth, round piece of steel. Testing has always typically shown that the Palomar knot is one of the strongest (if not strongest) fishing knots, I’m not sure where the uni would stack up against the other two though.

I also like braided line with a leader because it allows you to take advantage of the braid’s sensitivity and casting distance, while keeping a lower visibility from the fish’s perspective. But I will say that fishing around the Trestles, I’m usually throwing 100% flouro for the reason you mention and for getting the jig to the bottom faster.

You could try the FG knot, it’s supposedly the strongest braid to flouro knot, but it takes longer to tie than a double uni.

[McLovin]

I’ve been by these campgrounds a few times and it seems like the WMA staff does a pretty good job maintaining the grass. I would still probably bring a weedeater as mentioned, but I don’t think you would have too much of an issue. Just make sure you purchase the camping permit for the days you are staying! If you look back through historical imagery, you’ll see they are pretty heavily used during duck season. Not completely full, but one or two people at almost every campground.

[McLovin]

@Team1morecast Thinking along the lines of trophy trout fisheries, I was listening to the Cut and Retie podcast and they had an episode dedicated to people catching their first striped bass in the northeast. Overfishing had basically destroyed the striper population to the point that a moratorium was put in place. All these guys talked about how it was so unheard of to even catch a striper. Something several of them mentioned was how strong the weakfish population was during that time. Weakfish are extremely closely related to speckled trout and striped bass basically fill the same role as redfish once you get up around New Jersey.

As the striper population came rebounding back, the weakfish population plummeted to the point that you can only keep 1 fish now in NJ. I’ve also heard on another podcast that you can even see a hierarchy where redfish, speckled tout, and stripers live. Basically you can cast to a point and the dominant redfish are all you will catch until you fish them out of that spot. Then the stripers bite, then the speckled trout will feed last.

I’m not sure if I’m just rambling but my thoughts are this:

1. I wonder how much available forage is available to truly grow trophy speckled trout and does our normally robust redfish population hurt this aspect/will we see this dip in our redfish help that fishery as well.

2. How much this large population of bass that may have been extended beyond their historical range impacted available forage and is that more of the true impact vs the salinity? Thinking that if you allow more species in to compete in the areas that would normally just be your trout/redfish it probably hurts those populations directly.

3. It’s known that bull redfish will prey on speckled trout. Trophy trout are obviously different creatures, being more solitary. Maybe that’s more of a learned trait to avoid the bull redfish attacking schools of trout? My perspective changed on how large of a fish another fish will eat when I saw the guy who found a dead 30″ trout with a 16″ mullet in its stomach lol.