Jason Shilling and Gerald Roy couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me when I told them I wasn’t a big fan of fishing spoons for redfish.
For me, spoons are one of those lures that works for everybody but me.
I’ve been in the boat with enough anglers smoking redfish to know they work. However, whenever I pick up one, I just can’t seem to buy a bite.
Perhaps it is my complete and total lack of confidence in spoons.
Perhaps I fish them wrong.
Perhaps I don’t fish them long enough.
“Perhaps you don’t fish the right one,” Capt. Jason Shilling said.
Shilling and Roy always keep tied on three different spoons that they feel meet any fishing condition they happen to encounter during a day on the water.
“When it gets a little murky, we like to put the black (spoon) on,” Shilling explained. “Silver if they got a lot of mullet, and gold is just a common one to use. They’re weedless, got a lot of action to them and a lot of flash.”
According to Shilling, spoons make redfish bite more out of a reaction than because they are hungry. Simply put, that means redfish, being a predator fish, won’t allow such an easy meal to pass by even if they have no intention on eating at that particular moment.
“You may not feel like eating right after you just polished off a big old steak,” Roy said. “But let your wife throw some popcorn in the microwave or bring out a box of Crunch-and-Munch —you’re going to eat whether you want to or not.”
Because of their sleek design, Shilling and Roy say they can fish spoons through just about anything in the water — anything except slime grass.
“That slime grass gets on anything, spoons included,” Shilling lamented. “But a spoon will come through rocks, regular grass, wood …. Anything you think will hold a redfish is good for spoon fishing.”
Can I blame my lack of spoon-fishing success on fishing a gold one when I should have been fishing a black one?
Perhaps, but the only way to know for sure is to tie on three different spoons and try them all.
Maybe when I hit the right combination, I’ll figure out what all the fuss is about.
