A morning on Perdido Key

I had a family beach trip to the Alabama coast in late July and was lucky enough to find time to fish on two occasions. I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on a fishing license, so I stuck to saltwater both days and drove a little bit further east to fish in Florida, where the cost of a license is acceptable. I opted to access the water via the Gulf Islands National Seashore on Perdido Key. This was strictly a wade fishing trip as the kayak didn’t make the cut when it came to packed family beach gear.

On the first morning I decided to see what I could catch on the grass flats behind Perdido Key. I assumed the ground would be hard enough to walk on and for the most part I was right as I only encountered a few soft spots.

Things were pretty slow early on. I was throwing a charlie over and around the edges of grass flats and anywhere that I found deeper troughs. My hope was to run into some speckled trout, but really I would have been thrilled catching anything.

After a couple hours with nothing to show I waded back toward the vehicle and grabbed my nymph box. At this point I just wanted to catch something and I knew there were smaller fish around. With the mentality of “catch anything that swims” I went back out in and waded in a different direction.

With a nymph trailed behind my streamer I quickly got into fish. The first was surprisingly not a pinfish. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a juvenile pigfish, which it turned out were relatively abundant on the grass flats as I’d come to find out.

Shortly after the pigfish I got the pinfish I had expected to get. I knew these were ubiquitous on grass flats in Florida, so it was only a matter of time before I ran into one. I’d proceed to catch several more.

The next species I ran into was the inshore lizardfish, which is one I’ve caught in the past, and another I expected to run into. They weren’t quite as abundant as the pinfish and the pigfish so I was happy to have caught the one I did. I made my way to a pretty significant cut between the bay I was fishing in Big Lagoon and a different cove. It was here that I noticed some nervous baitfish activity and after casting into it a couple times I hooked into a more substantial fish.

After a really fun fight complete with a couple of big jumps I had a ladyfish to hand. This poor man’s tarpon was a hoot on the fly rod! These things don’t get enough love.

I worked the run a bit more, but never ran into anything else. Satisfied with the morning I headed back to the condo to rejoin the fam, but was eager to see what else was out there.