Idling out with Captain Jody Campbell, a seasoned flats guide here on the Nature Coast, we were fishing the flats of Florida’s Apalachee Bay around the St. Marks and Ochlockonee Rivers. Jody lives on the water here, and has fished and guided in the area for over twenty-five years. His primary targets are trout and redfish, and in the summer, tarpon and some close in kingfish.
One sign of a good guide is his booking capacity. Jody stays booked literally every day for three months in advance. He has several customers who book him for one to two weeks at a time. So I felt good about the day’s possibilities as we popped up on plane in his Kenner bay boat
We only ran a short distance, maybe a half-mile through the twisting channel, before Jody idled back and turned onto the flat. We were behind a sand and oyster bar that ran parallel to the shore, and the water was only about three feet deep. I looked to the bottom in search of grass, but found only dark water and mottled sand. The recent rains had stained the bay waters from the tannic runoff in the feeder rivers.
“The grass is beginning to appear again”, said Jody as he stopped the boat. “We have some nice turtle grass on these flats in the summer, and it should begin growing fast this month. There isn’t as much now as there was twenty years ago, but it appears to be healthy.”
We began our drift with the slight wind pushing us east into the sun. As we moved across the water, Jody providing stability with the trolling motor, we began throwing 3/8 ounce pink jig heads with a pink and white swim tail grub. We cast with the wind and worked the grub back to the boat. A quick snap jerk of the rod was followed by several slow retrieves of the jig. The idea was to keep the jig off the bottom and moving slowly toward the boat with short, fast, jerky movements.
It didn’t take long, maybe five minutes, until Jody hooked up a nice trout. While he reeled in a small “spec”, he described the pattern that trout follow on the flats around Apalachee Bay.
