Headed to Bradenton to fish Palma Sola Bay with my brother. He recently moved to Bradenton and neither of us had fished the area before so we decided to do some exploring.
The bay is a lot larger than the areas I am used to fishing. The bay has a large quantity of fish able water, with tons of mangroves and oyster beds and grass flats.
Being an exploratory trip and not knowing much about the bay we began looking for signs of life in shallow water. Not 10 casts in I had landed a small red on a weedless DOA CAL jerk shad, so the skunk got out of the boat quickly. We paddled away from that area after a few more casts to find some more mulling mullet. My brother switched to a weedless rig as well and hooked up to the fish of the day at our next spot.
The wind had us drifting at a pretty good clip, so we paddled back to the starting point and made another drift. Another small red for me and by the end of that drift the tide had brought in enough water to push the mullet elsewhere. We paddled around to explore the area a bit. We didn't have much success so we decided to paddle back towards the launch. On the way in we fished an oyster bed that was exposed when we passed it earlier but had become submerged underneath the incoming tide. I picked off a small snook and my brother a small trout and we called it a day.
Overall it was an interesting place to fish and is a place I would like to explore a bit more in the future.
Nice fish!
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