Panama City Fishing Paradise

As we skimmed over the mirror-calm surface of Saint Andrew Bay, en route from Sun Harbor Marina to the DuPont (Highway 98) bridge that separates Saint Andrew from East Bay, I marveled at how large an area of inshore waters sprawled northwest, northeast and southeast of Panama City. I had no idea.

“Our entire system includes four bays,” explained Capt. Matt Smith, our guide for the day: “West Bay, North Bay, Saint Andrew Bay and East Bay.” These total up to nearly 170,000 acres of water, Smith pointed out. And a glance at a map shows an astonishing amount of fishable shoreline.

Given the ideal weather on that ­early-summer morning, I kept looking for other boats with anglers also intent on hooking some bull redfish. But as Smith positioned his 21-foot Cobia bay boat near the bridge channel and dropped anchor, I noted that we had the whole area to ourselves.

We intended to fish some of the Storm soft plastics that my fishing partner, Dan Quinn, had brought down with him from Minnesota. Smith had plenty of small, live menhaden — cast-netted that morning — filling his baitwell, and he explained that plastics could be dynamite in shallower areas of the bays, but here in nearly 20 feet of water, they were a much tougher sell.

Nevertheless, the intrepid Quinn did hook a good fish on a Storm 360GT Searchbait soft-plastic, his first bull red drum ever. But bowing to the power of live baits, we put some of Smith’s pogies to good use, landing several more reds to at least 30 pounds, giving our light ­spinning outfits quite a workout.

read more at sportfishingmag.com.