Made a trip over to the fishing gear liquidator at Oldsmar Flea Market today and picked up an 8' Okuma rod/reel combo as a cheap setup to toss out live/chunk bait while I was working artificials with my St Croix.

Headed over to Honeymoon Island Beach with my neighbor and our daughters in tow.

Threw out a shrimp on a line weighted to keep it on the bottom and let it sit while I was working a Super Spook Jr on my #1 rod. Nothing was happening on the top water artificial so I walked over and noticed the shrimp line was looking kinda limp and started reeling it in...

Um...woah...fish...ON?

Wound up catching a personal best spotted trout:





All in all, a slow day...but the nice trout kept me from getting skunked. B)

Nice trout!

Chris......I'm happy to repeat what I posted on the other forum.......nice trout!!! :)

*lol*

I'm still reading both forums myself.

Picked up another nice trout (17") yesterday wading the point near dog beach. Got her on a white bucktail jig. Since she was in the slot range, she's now filleted and bagged in my freezer.

Caught a ton of pins and grunts on a little bottom rig using raw shrimp and cut pieces of gulp. They were hitting the hooks within seconds of them hitting the water. So if you have kids who like to catch small fish, action was guaranteed.

I'm still trying to find a good sandy area for flounder and pompano. My silly willy jigs should show up in the mail any day now! =]

Just to let you know Chris, those pigfish are one of my favorite baits for snook...when you catch those keep them and throw em where snook might be...if there's one around they will snatch it up in a second. Pinfish are good too, but pigfish are my favorite

Yup...I put several pins and a few grunts out on a freeline while we were there, but nothing took them so they got reprieves. If the snook were on the beach right now, bait would not have been a problem...