Great Weather and Fishing in the Hernando Beach Cuts.
This was one of the better days fishing in the Hernando Beach cuts. Based on the recent trips to the cut, I thought it might be a difficult day fishing. But it was nice to be wrong.
We stopped at the Hernando Beach channel turn marker on the way to the cuts and the whitebait was plentiful. At the time I was hoping that there was not too much bait around. Last week when I fished the cuts there was so much bait that the fish did not try very hard to chase the bait.
The first cut we fished was marker number 21. After about 10 minutes I was about to move and just happened to look along the edge of the rocks and saw a couple of redfish cruising toward us.
The first redfish was 29 inches, just a little too big. I saw two other redfish chasing this one as I brought it to the boat. This one looked to be the biggest out of the group.
I released this one an grabbed another bait.
About a minute later I had the another redfish on. This time it was just over 23 inches and coming home for dinner.
I tossed out another bait and as soon as the bait hit the water I saw a fish come up from the bottom to hit the bait. Typically redfish do not do that and as it turns out it was 25 inch snaggled tooth trout.
After the trout things slowed way down. I could not see any more fish cruising the sand edges of the rocks. I was about to move when we hooked up with big sting ray. It pulled the boat through the cut, so I decided to move to the next cut to the west. The first fish was a decent trout about 23 inches.
I watched for redfish along the edges and not long after we got there I saw 3 redfish laying in along the edge. The next redfish came in at 26 inches and filled our limit. We had plans to have grilled redfish for our guest and did not want to disappoint our dinner guest.
After I caught that fish a school of over sized redfish moved in to the cut and it was no longer fishing, it was catching! We caught big redfish non-stop for the next hour. The best part about this was that I could see the redfish stacked up on the east side of the cut. So this was sight fishing while anchored. You do get to do that very often. There was a small school of whitebait and a school of redfish chasing them. I added couple of split shots to the line to get the bait closer to the bottom and slow the bait down so the redfish would have no trouble catching my bait. Everything bait that hit the water was greeted by a hungry redfish.
I took care of releasing each fish making sure it was revived
We had plenty of rod bending action
At this point we where getting tired, my wife hooked that last fish and it was the biggest fish of the day. She decided it would be best if she fought this fish marlin style...
The redfish put up a great fight.
After about a 15 minute fight I revived the last fish. We decided it was time to go swimming and relax after a great day fishing. When we left the redfish where still chasing baits and I'm sure we could have caught many more fish. However it is important not to over stress too many fish, especially in the same school. These fish will lay millions of eggs that will ultimately produce many more fishing/catching days like today!
Good Luck
zippyjr
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Tide : Falling 0.7 3:28pm
Water Clarity : Clear
Moon Phase: Third Quarter 45% full
Temp: 92F
Water Temp : 85F
Wind: 5-10 W mph
Bait: Whitebait
Results: 10 Over slot Redfish - 3 Redfish 23-26 - 3 Trout - 1 Jack - 1 Big String Ray.
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