I hooked up with Barfly to check out the the bait situation on the North side and to do a little scouting in the bay. We didn't sabiki any up at a marker or two, though we saw some on the sounder, and spent about a half an hour or so looking for bait drifting on the flats but weren't seeing any when John said to try a few blind casts over some grassy areas. He just knew they had to be there and we hadn't brought any chum.

Sure enough (note to self)... with a few tosses we had a decent well of medium to smallish threadfins and headed out to some structure in the bay to see if the macks had made it up there.

We didn't do any chumming but were able to find a couple of mackerel over some structure in a couple of spots. The mackerel, though legal sized, looked like they could at least use a sandwich so we didn't keep them. It's good to know that they're there though, next time we'll bring a chum block and get the smoker ready.

I was more interested in an earlier boast... "I think I've got this flats stuff down, I can get you on some fish daily based on the time of day and tide".

Well, I might be becoming a believer. His flats boat is in the shop (Chuck is doing some really cool custom fiberglass stuff at Discount Marine) so we couldn't get back as far as he wanted but I'm not exaggerating when I say I don't believe that we could have caught any more fish. Almost every cast, using new penny gulp shrimp on jig heads, we were pulling up smallish trout.

We only stayed there for an hour or so... they started very small, like 7-10 inches but kept getting bigger as time went on. We ended up catching maybe 12-15 with two in the slot, a few catfish and a loner mackerel. Seems to me if we'd have been there a little later or stayed longer there'd have been more slot sized... but we'll find out next time. By then the flats boat should be all buffed out so we can really put his boast to the test.

Thanks Barfly, I had a great time, picked up a couple of things and look forward to the morning incoming test!