Bump In The Night

Strange things happen when fishing. Even stranger things happen when fishing at night.

We launched our kayaks right before sunset with an incoming tide and a plan to fish the lighted docks in a different section of the area that we've been targeting as of late. These docks were in deeper water, and stuck out into the current a bit more than the other docks we'd been fishing. We hoped to find snook.

The wind was an issue right off the bat, blowing 15-20 out of the north, the water was roiled up and wavy and the water clarity was murky. Luckily, we were heading south and I was hoping that the wind would calm down by the time we made our return trip to the put in.

The first docks we wanted to hit were dark, so we paddled into one of the inlets in an attempt to get out of the wind. We found some lights and went to work. Two underwater lights and one above water. Nothing. No feeding activity, no darting bait...all quiet. We paddled to the next set of lights - three docks in a row with above water lights on....perfect.

The first dock yielded nothing and after 15 minutes working DOA Shrimp around the light and adjacent shadows. Keith had moved to the second dock while I was getting my DOA from the maze of pilings it was wrapped around. He scored a nice trout within seconds of casting to the same light we had just moved from. I leapfrogged to the third dock and hooked into another good trout. The size of the larger trout mouths are quite different from their juvenile counterparts...maw-like and can eat quite large prey items. They seem quite a bit thicker as well. Keith had to get on someones dock at least once to retrieve his lure....

We pulled a few more fish out of these three docks and paddled on to find another spot. The wind had died down a bit, so we paddled out of the inlet to a perfect dock with a sweet light right above the waters surface. This dock was sticking out into the main channel, so the current sweeping by was stronger than that which was pushing through the inlet. We could see baitfish hopping on the surface and shadows beneath.

Now for the strange part....I started pulling out fish on almost every cast....a few dinks but mostly keeper sized trout. Keith was getting nothing. We were using the same lure, DOA Shrimp Clear-Red Flake, and he was pulling water while I was pulling fish. I don't get it. I switched over to a Storm Wild Eyed Shad in gray and black. These are 4 inch jerkbaits that look a lot like a finger mullet. I had it rigged on a 2/0 offset worm hook with the hook point inside the hook flap and no weight to allow for a slow sink rate and slight darting action. This worked better than the DOA Shrimp. I could see multiple trout getting into position and chasing it as soon as it hit the water. Keith managed to pull in only one fish out of this spot....Weird.

We paddled across the channel to a dock with green underwater lights. On my first cast, I caught my best trout of the night at around 20 inches. A beautiful, solid fish.

We continued working the docks with only a few more fish. Recorded a big "0" under the lights in another inlet....Weird.

Strange days (or nights) indeed.