The annual family vacation to Panama City Beach just wrapped up, and it was another great time with the family.  And yes, of course I fished.  A lot.

 

Got out with guide extraordinaire and star of "Chasin' the Sun" tv show Justin Leake, and Justin did what Justin does -- put us on fish.  The amberjack cooperated all day, and we wrestled with a pair of true reef donkies on entirely too light tackle to end the day.  The mahi and snapper were playing hard to get, but we picked up a few here and there.  Even a "slow" day in this place is 20+ fish.

 

 

Leading into the trip, I started hearing reports of red tide all the way up into PCB, including St Andrews Park which is my wading sweet spot.  Things seemed to clear up so I waded there for 2 afternoons but only ended up with a trout and 5 reds to show for it.  While there was bait and other life, it just wasn't at the volume I'm used to seeing.  There was certainly no lack of pinfish, who gladly nipped the tails off about 30 baits for me!

 

My buddy Justin offered up a "plan B" site and yeah, it was friggin' LOADED.  The first afternoon there took a little effort to find them, but I ended up with about a dozen, including a stud 20 inch trout.  The magic happened when I ran out of soft plastics from more pinfish annihilation, and the mirrodine came out.  To say they liked it was an understatement!  And the bonus was not having to rebait every 5 casts from toothy critters.

 

I couldn't leave PCB without getting another shot at that spot and when I returned the next afternoon, there was another gentleman already fishing from the bank.  No problem, plenty of water I can wade into.  As I got waist deep, he looked at me and said the spot was loaded with reds.  Yup, I already knew, but I was into fish by my 2nd cast and the action remained steady all afternoon.  It slowed a bit when I went to look for the fish in the exact spots I caught them on the day before, but I waded back into action later.  The reds had the pilchards all rounded up on a few occasions so I got to see a few nice feeding frenzies. DOA jerkbaits and CALs, mirrodine, and Zman Pogyz all produced nicely (and I'm now a Zman advocate since they even stand up to pinfish) And the bonus was that I got to break in both my new GoPro and my new inshore combo properly with ~30 wading fish.

 

Till next year, PCB!

 

That looks awesome!  Nice fish!  

You are living the dream. Redfish and sea trout are on my bucket list of fish.