After more than a week of below freezing temperatures here in northeast Florida, some warmer weather finally moved in.  Not wanting to miss this opportunity, I loaded up the 'yak, pulled on my Seal Skinz waterproof socks, and headed down to the bait shop to get a couple dozen live shrimp. While I prefer to use artificial lures, cold weather slows down the fish, so I wanted to make my presentation as appetizing as possible and maximize my opportunity to bring home some tasty groceries.



After unloading the kayak, I was on the water and ready to fish by 0945. I arrived in time to catch the last half of the falling tide. Weather was partly cloudy with a forecast high of 68 degrees, 10% chance of rain. Moon was a waning gibbous, and water temperature was around 54 degrees. Winds were about 10 mph out of the southwest, which would push the tide out lower than normal and somewhat delay the incoming tide.

I was fishing two rigs simultaneously.  The passive setup was a dropshot rig with a circle hook baited with a live (or dead) shrimp. For the active rod, I tied on a 1/4 ounce chartreuse jighead, also baited with a live shrimp and worked v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y across the bottom.  The first fish of the day was a small black drum, too small to keep or bother photographing. Not long after that, a scrappy rat red came calling, biting on the dropshot rig, followed by a flounder who ate a live shrimp on a jig:

           

The bite slowed down at this spot, so I moved on to another spot I had discovered on a past fishing trip, after installing a depth/fishfinder on the kayak. This "new" spot had a big oyster bed on one side, near a dropoff with about 12 feet of water at low tide.  From this spot, I pulled out a nice keeper red at 20".  He was caught using a piece of dead shrimp fished on a dropshot rig. The dropshot rig also came through again with a 16" black drum.

       

At dead low tide, I cruised around this hole for a bit, and caught a couple more undersize black drum and rat reds.  After the bite appeared to turn off, I decided to make my way back to the original spot, to see if I could intercept any fish on their way back up the creek with the incoming tide. I was also looking for a trout. Surprisingly, I had yet to see one the whole day.  On my previous fishing trip to this area, the place was lousy with small underslot trout. I must've caught and released at least 20 of them that day. They were being very shy today, though. 



The tide in this area gets very low - down to inches in many places - and I had to get out and pull the kayak back across a large sand flat to find some deeper water on the other side.  Remember that 10% chance of rain?  Looks like the spot I was sitting in was THAT 10%, because it started to rain. With no lightning or high winds, I slipped on my rain gear and continued fishing. Even with the steady drizzle, an incessant cloud of gnats descended upon me, and they didn't seem deterred by the insect repellent I was using. Fortunately, I brought along a headnet to keep them out of my nose and eyes. 

By now the tide was coming back in at a pretty good clip.  As I waited for the incoming tide to flood the creek sufficiently for me to paddle back to the ramp, no other fish seemed interested in hitting my bait.  When the water was high enough, I unstaked and began the paddle home. I stil had a live shrimp on a jig head, so I decided to make that "last cast" of the day. This time, it paid off with a very nice 20" trout:



Just in time to complete my inshore slam (trout-redfish-flounder) and make a nice addition to the dinner table!