REPORT FOR WEEK ENDING 1/7/06 by Capt. Butch Rickey It’s January 2nd. Trout season is officially open. After spending two days in the last week pre-fishing for keeping sized fish, John Hitt and I are ready to go out and put our limits of trout in the big well of his Coastline. We had a major low tide, at -0.9 ft. before any wind effects. That’s almost a half a foot lower than when we were fishing last week. Another front was on the way, and the wind was just coming around to the southeast, and would be south before the day was over. I hoped that would mean a good trout bite. We headed back to the Punta Rassa flats, where we had gotten our best trout in the previous week, hoping they would still be there. At first, we thought they had tricked us. John and I were both throwing his favorite white curlytail jig on a Cotee jighead. We weren’t getting bit! As we drifted toward shore on the breeze, I could see lots of mullet flipping about 100 yards away, close to the shore. I had a feeling the trout would be right there where the mullet were, and decided to change baits to increase our odds. I went to my favorite winter trout bait, the Exude RT slug, and went with the baby trout color. Yes, trout are carnivorous. I began getting hit almost immediately. The trout were still all but ignoring John’s white jig. But, John has great confidence in the bait and stayed with it, while I continued to catch nice slot fish. Finally, it was too much for John, and he switched to the Exude. We had the baitwell full with our two limits of trout (8 trout, 15 to 20 inches, 2 allowed over 20) in a jiffy, and were then fishing for the fun of catching. We continued catching fish, and before long we had company in the form of a couple of guys in kayaks. They fished on either side of us as we moved along using the Power Pole to hold us while we fished an area catching large ladyfish and trout, but I never saw either of them catch a fish. Guess they were throwing white jigs that morning. I don’t know. Once things slowed down, John reminded me that there were some great football games on early, and that we might as well head in so we could get things cleaned up and put away, and get the fish cleaned before game time. Our mission was accomplished. We had our keepers that would make a number of nice dinners. That’s the proper way to bring in the new year! That was it for the week, but it’s always slow for me in early January, and for most folks I know. But, I’ve noticed a big upturn in booking activity since we’ve put the holidays behind us. My early sense is that it will be a good spring if we don’t have too many losses to weather. So, if you’re coming down to visit and fish this spring, book as early as you can to insure that you get not only a good day, but a day. The good tide days are going fast.