Most plans lie in ruinous waste in the carnage of a plowed battlefield. On rare occasions, plans are realized, and even rarer still, they are exceeded.

Capt. Justin Bowles (jbfishingcharters.com) and I set out on a recent trip to find areas he could take clients speckled trout fishing. After a slow start, we hit jackpot, landing more specks than we had even hoped for.

With Bowles’ GPS loaded with new hotspots, we decided to ride our wave of good fortune by pushing deep into the marshes in search of keeper-sized redfish.

While doing map study the day before the trip, Bowles had located a pond with only one bayou providing ingress and egress and several trenasses draining into it. It looked like the perfect place to target redfish, but of course, you never really know until you get there to see with your own eyes if the area has suitable depth and water clarity.

Fortunately, this pond averaged about 3 feet, and the water was so good, we could see bottom in some areas.

And it also held fish. Plenty of them. Certain stretches of the pond were “clean,” i.e. devoid of aquatic vegetation, but those stretches held fewer fish. Whenever we got to areas thick with the stringy algae anglers know as snot grass, however, the fish pounded our spinnerbaits, especially the No. 4 H&H gold-colored Freshwater Jig Spinner teamed with a 1/4-ounce Deathgrip Jighead and a shrimp creole Matrix Shad.

Most of our bites came from the redfish we were targeting, but there was also some bycatch we didn’t mind bumping into in the least.

Check out the video below to see all the action.

Like the video? Please give it a thumbs-up, and subscribe to the Marsh Man Masson channel on YouTube. Also, leave a comment below or on the YouTube page. Do you typically target redfish after a morning of speckled trout fishing? What are some of your favorite hydrographic features for catching reds?