Bass and Flounder on Fowl River
October 27, 2012
It was a windy but beautiful day on Fowl River. We loaded the live-well with one speck, one redfish, and four flounder with shallow crankbaits.
We launched the boat a little after 7am at Fowl River Marina. This cold front had just began to push in so it was chilly air, but the water temperature was hanging around 73 degrees. These windows of pre-front fishing can be awesome, and Saturday was no exception.
Starting out, we targeted shallow flat inlets (1-3ft) right off the main river, North of Bellingrath Gardens. The Sammy (Zara-Spook type bait) caught several bass and rat-reds in these areas; walking the bait a few times and then a 3 second pause. They'd blow it up on the pause.
Once the sun got up a little higher, we moved out to main river banks, and started slinging shallow crankbaits (3-5ft divers). The average water depth was 2ft dropping to 6-9ft. We cranked them right along the bottom, making contact with whatever structure we could. This pattern caught all four of the flounder that day; the largest (first picture above) was 3 pounds.
Around noon we moved up the river further, fishing the end of long shallow points, where the depth started to fall from 3ft to 7+ft. It was slower going, but produced a slot 17" redfish, still using the shallow crankbait. We wrapped it up and headed back to launch a little after 1pm.
An exciting day on Fowl River for sure. The total catch with non-keepers was four or five redfish, four bass, four flounder, and one speckeled trout. You gotta love river fishing this time of year in Mobile! Tight lines!
