Flat Bridge Monday - Day & Night Report

With Monday off work, I took advantage of the nice weather and headed to the flattie bridge. On the way I realized that I forgot my jigheads at home, so I made a quick pitstop at Gander Mountain in Lake Mary. I grabbed some 1/8th red jigheads and browsed the DOA shad tails. Grabbed a pack of keylime and nite glow. Also grabbed a pack of DOA nite glow 3" shrimp. The nite glow color has been on my wishlist for a few days, I've been reading that it's deadly for snook and trout around dock lights at night. Also there have been good reports of snook being caught in the past week and large numbers of trout in the area.

So I finially arrived late morning after 10am and started tossing the DOA shad tail keylime. No hits. Put on a gulp new penny shrimp and again no hits. Crossed traffic to the other side of the bridge and first cast caught a 13" trout on new penny gulp shrimp. Few nibbles for the rest of the morning but no fish. Headed back home to rest and pickup my son from school.

Fast forward to evening, I head out again to try my luck on the nite glow lures I bought earlier today. I started in my usual spot but no hits. Crossed over to the trout hot spot and immediately noticed large schools of mullet close to the lights. Tossed a DOA nite glow 3" shrimp and caught a 13" trout. I wasn't getting very many hits on the shrimp, so I switched to a DOA nite glow shad tail and caught two more 13" trout back to back. Next cast I caught a spot croaker.









Action slowed on the paddletail so I switched to my topwater Badonk-A-Donk. To my rightside something was busting in the lights and I thought it would be larger trout. Nope, after aiming a few casts I hook into a huge ladyfish. One of the bigger ones I've seen. It was almost 2 ft long, 19" to the fork of tail. It was really fast in the water and it even went under the bridge briefly. I had to turn it around and wear it down a little. Not sure how I initially hooked it because when I pulled it up I realized that one of the treble hooks was just snagged near it's dorsal fin. Regardless it still counts! The ladyfish was chunked up for cutbait and with that I caught 2 small gafftopsail catfish.







Finished the evening with DOA nite glow shad tail again. I caught another ladyfish that was released. Then I hook into another 13" trout. Last fish of the night was a bluefish that was about 12-13" to the fork. All fish were released except for the large ladyfish that was used for cutbait. All together I got 4 undersized seatrout, 2 ladyfish, 1 bluefish, 1 spot croaker and 2 gafftopsail catfish. Nice variety mixed in there which makes for a very good night on the water. Plus now I'm a believer in DOA nite glow!