Friend of The New Angler, Jason Stanley, sent us this report.  We appreciate his contribution and hope to see many more in the future…

Let me first introduce myself. My name is Jason; I have been a fan of The New Angler for a while now. I am friends with and work with Brian. I have known Mike’s mom Carol so long, she still had brown hair and I still had all of mine. I hope to be a regular contributor to The New Angler as I spend a bunch of time fishing the Big Bend mainly from Keaton Beach down to Suwannee, A lot of which is by Kayak. I hope to also give a perspective on kayak fishing the Big Bend in future reports.

I headed out to Shired Island on Saturday, 6/2. By the way, I have heard the word “Shired” pronounced so many different ways; I really have no idea how to actually say it. I took my boat instead of the “yak” as I thought if the redfish bite was slow I could head out and see what was happening on the flats south of Horseshoe. I was happy to be displaying my new “The New Angler” stickers on the truck. By the way, I noticed they are $5.00 on the website, How come Brian charged me $10? What the hell.

First thing I noticed was the sediment in the water due to the rains we recently had. I’m not complaining about the rain but the water inshore looked like chocolate milk. I fished the incoming tide but nothing was happening. I was hoping to try some top-water Zara Spook action around the oyster bars but the floating grass made that impossible. The tide was completely in, around 12:30 and so far no fish in the boat. I decided to head out to the flats just south of Horseshoe.

 Immediately I started catching trout in some areas that were about 5 to 6 feet surrounded by cuts that were 8-10. Only one problem, of the 14 or 15 trout I caught, all of them were 13 to 14 inches. Don’t get me wrong, I love to catch any fish and appreciate days there is a good bite but I probably could have caught trout all day long and I am pretty sure there would not have been one in the slot. All of the trout were caught on a D. O. A. terror eyes jig.

 After the small tout extravaganza, I made up my mind to leave the little guys to grow up or be taken by some dumb asses that choose to ignore slots and limits just like they ignore their jobs, hygiene and child support. You all know the ones I’m talking about. I managed to get back in a few creeks and try to get into some reds. Even after the tide had moved in and was moving back out the water remained the color of yoo-hoo. I managed to have the customary “what the hell is that” moment out of the corner of my eye as I snuck up on top of some big black drum. And yes, even though I know they are a big black bag of worms and fight like a Maytag washer, I still took a few obligatory casts in their direction.

 I did manage to get one decent red on the outgoing tide on a redfish magic spinner bait. I generally have good luck on these once I remove the ridiculous gummy bear shad that comes on them. I usually replace them with a small D.O.A. body. The bad news is, as I was preparing to take the hook out and get a nice picture, the fish flipped in a way that not only twisted out of my hand into the water but managed to break about three inches off of my new Wright and McGill 7ft-6 spinning rod. Needless to say, I don’t have a picture of the fish but I do have one of the carnage done to my rod. Oh well, all in all not a bad day.