Headed out last night with a coworker after work and launched from the Vilano ramp around 6. As the title states, the tides were right. If you are hunting trout you always want to fish the bridge area with the last couple hours of the outgoing and the first three hours of the incoming and last night did not dissapoint. All fish were caught on DOA 4" glow and Gold specked shrimp and glow Cal Paddle tail. The night started off slow but picked up once the tide started coming back in. Usually the fish will school up and pounce on the bait moving in and out from underneath the bridge. last night was a little different and we had to move around quit a bit. The trout seemed to run paralell with the bridge from the shore out to about the 4th pylon. Once we figured out there feeding pattern we stayed on them and each caught our limit. We also caught several blues and released a ton of smaller trout (15"-16") legal keepers.

The trout were measured out at 21, 20, 19, 18.5, 16.25 and 15.25

The monster trout story: We were ready to head back and decided to do a couple of drift casts at the shoreline. On my very last cast of the night i decided to let the paddle tail come to rest on the botom and retireve with an extremely slow motion hoping to pick up a red. After about the the 4th crank my line starts pulling against the tide. I set the hook and the drag starts screaming. I am thinking the whole time that i finally got my red on this side of the bridge. I could feel the distinct runs with intermittent head shakes just like a red. Oh boy was the blood pumping. Once at the side of the yak my disappointment in not being a red was overpowered by the sheer mass of this monster trout. It technically is a gator; however, what impressed me most was the girth of this beast. (picutre does not do jsutice)

The action (art of catching):
DOA shrimp: Once casted I would let the shrimp settle and start its sinking. i would wait about 5-10 seconds before i would start the retireve. Before reeling i would make 2 quick short twitches of the rod to get it moving and would continue this motion with a constant slow steady reel. The trout would attach on the downward movement of the shrimp

Cal paddle tail: Cast out and wait 3-5 seconds and reel in nice and slow. The second methond which also produced amazing strikes was to twitch the bait once in awhile during the retrieve.

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Jackson Cuda

Nice!! Did you have the mad Russian with ya? Glad you both did well.

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2012 Wilderness Systems Ride 135 (Mango)
Future Beach Angler 160 DLX (Sand)
14ft Coleman Scanoe.

yes i did. he limited out as well.

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Jackson Cuda