ABSOLUTE FLORIDA FLATS FISHING, and clients Jerry Kembling and friends John and Cody on a inshore flats fishing charter using Captain Rich’s state of the art flats fishing skiff the 18’8” Silverking (Grande Master) covering and fishing skinny waters and different inshore flats from Clearwater, Tarpon Springs and New Port Richey Fl., all in the same ½ day charter, before the latest cold front on December 5th,catching 8 nice red fish and about 7 Gator trout all in the 3lb. to 6lb. range on light tackle 8lb. spinning tackle. We were using a combination of live and artificial baits that included Mirrolure she dogs top water plugs, CAL white bait imitations 3” soft plastic on a ¼ oz. jig and Berkley’s deadly 7” jerk shad rigged Texas style. Mostly push pole the skiff or using the Motor Guide trolling motor on slow and letting the light E>S>E> wind, 67* F water temps, and air temps in the 80’s, move us along broken bottom grass and pothole areas on the flat stopping with the Power Pole to fish structure, shell bars, grass points, and oyster bars, rock piles and creek mouths nearby. We even ran into one creek guarded by 6” of water out front that drops off into 5’ to 9’ of water in some bends that were loaded with Redfish, but the tide was leaving so fast we could only stay for about 15 minutes ,with 4 nice Reds caught, and a couple few more long lined released fish before boat side, we had to get out of there or we would have been there till 10- o’clock at night before we could get out , we even bumped the sand good on the way out with our Bob’s machine shop jack plate raised and the boat on a full-plane. The big Trout chased the jerk-baits best and were scattered with the warm December water temp’s on all of the inshore flats fished. We kept some nice Trout as we were north of the closed south region at the end of our fishing trip, enough for a nice dinner and a lunch and releasing all other fish caught. It was a fun filled fast paced action full 1/2 day.
