Day 2: Fishing Inshore for Trout and Redfish During September at Mississippi’s Gulf Coast
 You can catch 50 to 100 speckled trout and redfish per day right now on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast during September, says Captain Sonny Schindler of Shore Thing Charters out of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. “I generally fish shell islands on the east side of the Biloxi marsh about 3-miles from Bay St. Louis for speckled trout and redfish through September. Generally early in the morning when the tide’s running, you can see the shrimp jumping out of the water, and the birds diving on them.”
Schindler’s also learned that the water closest to shore usually produces more big trout than deeper water does. “If I can locate trout in 1-1/2- to 2 feet of water, they’ll generally be bigger than the trout I catch in 5 feet of water,” Schindler explains. “The big trout move into shallow water, because when the bait comes into that shallow water, the trout don’t have to chase the bait long distances to catch and eat it.”
 To catch the trout, Schindler begins fishing with live shrimp. Then once he locates the fish, he switches to soft-plastic lures, like the Mister Twister Exude RT Slug, the Fantail Shrimp and the Twister Tail Grubs. “To catch numbers of trout, catch as many trout as you can out of a school of trout while the school’s feeding,” suggests Schindler. “By using plastic lures, you can keep your bait in the water longer and get it back in the water quicker after you catch a trout or a redfish. When the fish are feeding, they’ll hit almost anything.” In many of the areas Schindler fishes, he easily can catch 50 to 100 trout from one spot, but he manages his fishing to prevent overfishing. “I generally catch 10 or 15 trout from one spot and then move to the next,” Schindler reports.
 Once Schindler catches his limit of trout, he then searches for redfish. “If a school of big redfish don’t move into the area where I’m catching trout, I look for eroded banks on the edges of the marshes where the redfish may be holding,” Schindler advises. “I prefer to fish isolated clumps of grass or little ditches and cuts coming out of the marsh where the redfish will be waiting on a falling tide to eat the baitfish that come out of the marsh.  Although we have a number of slot reds we can catch and keep, we often see plenty of 25- to 35-inch reds. “If the water clears-up like it usually does in September, we can see the reds pushing water with their heads and tailing and then sight fish for them. September’s a great month for specks and reds in the Biloxi Marsh. However, since the marsh is in Louisiana waters, you need a Louisiana license to fish there. But if you fish with a guide, you can get a 3-day guide pass for about $8.”
To learn more about fishing out of Bay St. Louis and the weather and the fishing conditions before your trip to the Gulf Coast, contact Captain Sonny Schindler at (228) 342-2295, email sonnyschindler@yahoo.com, or visit www.shorethingcharters.com.
 To learn more about fishing Mississippi’s Gulf Coast every month and the types of fish you can catch and how to catch them, get the new Kindle eBook, “Fishing Mississippi's Gulf Coast and Visitor's Guide” by John E. Phillips. Go http://www.amazon.com/Fishing-Mississippis-Coast-Visitors-ebook/dp/B008DWLUZ6/. Or, you can go to http://www.amazon.com/kindle-ebooks and type-in the name of the book, download the book to your Kindle, and/or download a Kindle app for your iPad, SmartPhone or computer.
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