[Marque]

Ran into a friend last night who had been stuck at the beach with his wife for the last week and was dying to get out on the water. I felt sorry for the guy and thought the least I could do was take him for a boat ride. That's all I figured was going to happen with all this rain. Launched out of Maxie's at sun up met up with a stiff 1 1/2 chop in the 4 mile, but the water wasn't horrible so I decided to see what it looked like a little further south. The water in the bay was fresh but fishable, meaning I could see a black/purple bait 3" to 4". I think the fish in VBay have better vision than most fish because if they didn't they would starve. Anyway I knew I had another hour and a half before the tide was out and decided to fish small cut on the north end of the bay. A place I have fish in the summer and fall with success but rarely caught a fish until the shrimp move in. Moved in to find the water falling out of the marsh hard hard and meeting up with the stout bay chop from the South which seemed to be the right recipe for Redfish. It took us about 10 minutes to find where they were hanging out but once we did they hit the fish box pretty quick. We caught 4 in the 21" to 24" range while the tide was still dropping hard. Once the current slacked the little guys moved and the last 6 were all around 17". Caught everything on artificial either Purp/Chat, Black/Chat, or Salt n' Pepper. Wasn't thrilled about small reds but we hadn't gotten rained on yet and it looked like we were going to bang out a limit without getting soaked so they went in the box. Even managed a flounder to boot. We were back in the truck for 9:30 and home for 10:00. Not a bad morning all things considered.