Simple Surf Specks

I was mostly at the beach to capture coastal scenes and for the sake of finding proper backdrops for some needed lure photos, but of course I had to make a few casts in the best looking spots. I found two spots that held extra promise, and one of the two delivered.

The first was a short jetty with a nice tidal flow washing across the end and a couple of solid eddies. It looked great, but I was unable to make anything happen. The second was a steep section of beach right at the inlet that looked like it should be notably deeper than surrounding waters and that formed a big back eddy. It was toward the low end of an incoming tide so a lot of stuff that looked like it could be good at times was high and dry, making the deep hole seem extra promising.

On either my second or third cast, my Paradise Popper X-treme shot out of sight, and I set the hook into what turned out to be a 13- or 14-inch speckled trout. Knowing trout are seldom alone, I repeated the cast and got the same result, except with a slightly larger fish. Although it didn't turn out to be an every cast thing, I caught five or six and missed about the same number over the next hour or so, despite changing things up a few times in hopes of getting other types of photos. Eventually the bite died, which I attributed to the tide having risen quite a bit.

The following morning I did some kayak stuff in another area, and when I finished that I realized it was close to dead low tide. If I scurried back to my spot at the end of the island, I could catch the incoming tide right from the front and possibly extent the bite. It worked perfectly, with the fish biting about twice as long and me catching about twice as many trout.

None of the trout were huge, but that was fine with me. There's just something fun about fishing alone on the beach with very simple gear, identifying a spot that seems like it should produce and finding success.