Pinfish and live shrimp work well for live bait, as do the finger mullet. However, smaller fish often get to your shrimp before a trout has a chance. One of the minnows, or a plastic grub on a jighead under a popping float, is a better bet. Sinking or suspending MirrOlures also works well in the deeper water.

Stick with color patterns that have some red in them. I personally like the red and white standard better than any other color.

ST. JOHNS RIVER
Continuing north, the St. Johns River and associated estuaries off the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) provide more trout options. The fishing methods are different here because the water is different.

Instead of grassflats, as well as mud and oyster flats, salt marshes predominate. Here the seatrout run the channel edges and oyster bars. Four- to 5-foot tide changes puts water into the saw grass marshes on high tide. Add a little east wind, and the water backs up even higher. These grasslines are where trout feed on a high tide.

The Mill Cove area around the Dames Point Bridge over the St. Johns River has a perfect grassline for trout. On the south side of the river, the grass edge runs east and west in Mill Cove. At high tide, you can ease along the grass and chuck plastic grubs, MirrOlures or jigheads with shrimp or mud minnows right up next to the vegetation.

Moving east toward the mouth of the St. Johns, Clapboard Creek enters from the north. There is an island on its west side, about a half mile north of the State Route 105 bridge across this creek. The creek channel runs close to the shore of this island and forms a perfect run for trout.

Fish the high outgoing tide with a jig-and-shrimp rig or a plastic grub. Throw to the shallow edge and work the bait back into deep water.

Live shrimp under a float also catch trout here, but don't opt for a popping float. The water to fish is too deep. Popping corks work well in water down to about 5 feet deep. If the cork is set deeper, the rig becomes very difficult to cast.

This is where long slip-floats come in handy. Designed to handle a variety of weights and depths, they allow you to cast the float, and still be able to get a bait down deeper. It's possible to set the stop knot on a float at 10 feet or deeper.

Allow the float to move with the tide, keeping a live shrimp about half way down in the water column. Cast upcurrent and let the float come back down to you.

In the ICW, both north and south of the St. Johns River, are numerous creeks, bays and backwater areas. Any one of these feeders can hold trout on any given day. Small-boat anglers often troll grubs on jigheads in these creeks to locate the trout.