Banner Night at Flat Bridge 9/24

During the almost hour drive to the bridge I prayed to the fishing gods that nobody would be in my favorite spot tonight. When I arrived just after 10:00PM, the rain had just stopped and to my surprise I had the bridge to myself! As soon as I noticed nobody was there I got super excited, this doesn't happen very often. My favorite hole was open and this is where I would hopefully catch some fish tonight. For this trip I brought my castnet because I wanted to free line some finger mullet. I brought my jigging stuff with me also incase the free line action was slow. Gathered what I needed and quickly walked to the other end of the bridge, where I was going to fish. First step was to drop the bucket to get some water for the live well. Then in one cast of the net I had several nice finger mullet. The bait is really thick now that the fall mullet run is in full force. I probably only threw my net 3 times the whole night, and came out with close to 40-50 finger mullet.

Immediately started free lining with a swivel and leader. I wanted to setup my two baitfeeder rods that were setup with a swivel, leader line, and small hook. This didn't work out very well with live mullet, I was concerned the lines would cross and tangle. The extra weight of the swivel seemed to tire out the mullet also. I switched over to my jigging rod and tied a small hook directly to the mainline, no leader or swivel this time. I worked around the lights where I could see some trout hanging around under the schools of mullet. Tried to keep the mullet in front of their faces and also single them out away from the big schools. I caught a couple nice 15" trout almost back to back. I hooked and lost several other fish. Alot of ladyfish striking on the surface. At one point they were feeding so aggressively that as soon as my live mullet hit the water, I could see 3-5 fish swarming to strike. The trout decided to eat again and I caught two more, biggest was 16" long. Finially at the end of the night I landed 2 large ladyfish that took me for a ride. I wanted to stay longer but at this point it was 2:30AM and I still had to work in the morning. LOL

All together I caught 4 spotted seatrout between 15-16" and 2 large ladyfish! All caught on live finger mullet.