My son called me last week. He had a three day weekend and wanted to go down to the coast and duck hunt. He is my my favorite hunting buddy and without hesitation I agreed. He would drive down Friday and scout the marsh with his binoculars and set up camp. When I got off work Friday I would hook up to my little duck boat and meet him where he picked to camp and we would hunt Saturday and Sunday morning. When I got there he told me there were not a lot of ducks around yet but he had found a spot in the marsh with about 150 birds. Teal, Pintail, and Redheads. Overnight the steady north wind changed to a stiff southeast wind and blew an extra foot and a half of water into the marsh which is too much for where they were feeding but we kicked the boat off the trailer into the marsh. After a short run in the dark we set the dekes out and popped up the boat blind on the little boat. We had one beautiful Redhead drake decoy and shot it and that was it. Pretty slow!

At 8:30 we had seen very few birds in the air and agreed to give it till 9:00am. At 9 we picked up the dekes and motored back to the truck and cooked hamburgers on the tailgate and weighed our options. We called the audible and exchanged the decoys for trout rods and a pocked full of jig heads and soft plastics and fished out of the little duck boat. We caught a couple limits of nice 16”-19” trout and threw several more back, four slot reds and several nice flounder. Flounder season is closed, so all the flounder went back.
We went back to camp fried trout and iced the rest of the fish. Over dinner we agreed to punt on the duck hunting and sleep late and fish Sunday morning before going home. We slept till six this morning before getting up and perking a pot of coffee and fixing breakfast. Then we broke camp and put the duck boat back in the water and went fishing. We landed on them at our first stop. We caught a couple limits of trout that we put on a stringer, a half dozen reds we threw back, and 8 or ten more flounder that had to all go back.





I also caught and released about a 6’ alligator gar that ate my jig. He was a handful on a trout rod with 12 pound line. When I set the hook I thought it was another redfish. He stayed down and came to the boat pretty easy. When I pulled him up and he saw the boat he tail walked about 15’ and took about 80 yards of line. As far as trash fish go it was a spectacular fight. Luck was on my side and I was able to work him back to the boat. My son was able to get my jig out of his mouth with a de-hooker while the gar fish was snapping at him without getting bit.

I am blessed!

Congrats on a Great trip!

Wow nice bunch of fish, glad ya'll had a great trip

That’s awesome!

Thanks y’all. Seasonal migrations for both waterfowl and fish appear to be a solid month behind this year. Back when I was a young man and didn’t know any better, I was an eternal optimist. I would have doubled down on that loser and rode it all the way to the finish line…