The “Last Second” Fishing Trip Strategy [Exploring Biscayne Bay]

One of the things that has significantly boosted my consistency in catching my target species has been to simply force myself to set aside some time to plan out my trips before leaving my house…

Even if I’m fishing areas that I go to often.

Although it seems way too simple to make much of a difference, I’ve found that it’s essential to set a detailed plan for your fishing trips on where you will be fishing based on the conditions that you’ll be facing.

Because without a plan, you’ll have a very tough time dialing into the trends that will help you continually get better and better.

But what about if you have a last-second fishing trip and don’t have time to set a detailed plan?

This article will show you the core 3 things to do when you have a short window of fishing time that opened up at the last second.

The “Last Second” Fishing Trip Plan

One of my favorite things to do is to go to a region I’ve never been to before to explore some new waters and catch some fish.

And although I prefer to be able to sit down in front of my computer to really analyze the potential areas that I’ll be fishing on my computer to select 4 to 5 spots to check out, there are times when trip opportunities come up unexpectedly where there’s just not enough time to fit that in.

So here’s what I do in those instances:

1. Check tides
2. Check weather (focus on wind speed/direction and rain predictions)
3. Pick 2 to 3 spots to fish based on tides and the weather

An example of this quick last second trip plan going into effect was on a recent trip where I was down in Miami to film a new fishing course for tarpon.

Here are the steps that I took.

1. Tides

I used an app that I really like called “Aye Tides” to get a quick snapshot of the tidal movement during the time that I had to be out on the water.

Here’s what I saw when checking out the tides:

The area in the red box was the time opening I had, so I knew that the current would be coming in pretty strong.

Duration: Done in less than 1 minute

2. Weather

I used “The Weather Channel” app on my phone to get an understanding of how strong the wind was along with which direction it was going to be blowing.

This factor was very important to me because I only had my paddle board, and it gets totally overtaken by strong wind so I needed to know if I was limited to just canals and small creeks or if I could venture out into open water.

I learned that the wind was just a light 5 mph from the East with a low chance of storms, so that opened the door to go out on the bay or into the creeks.

Best of all, the forecast was mostly sunny so I knew that I’d have the opportunity to see fish as long as I selected a good spot based on the latest trends.

Duration: Just 1 to 2 minutes to check the forecast and the radar

3. Pick Your Fishing Spots

Since I was in a totally new place, I had to spend more time than normal on this step because I didn’t know of any kayak or paddleboard launch sites in Biscayne Bay.

So my first goal was to find some public parks that were on the water knowing that most of them would have at least some sort of public access to the water.

For that, I just used the “Maps” app that came with my iPhone and looked for waterfront land shaded in green since that typically represents public parks.

With this quick check, I had 5 options to use for a potential launch site.

So I then switched over to the satellite imagery view to see what types of fishing grounds were within a short paddle of those parks.

After checking out a couple of them, I selected one that had some spots that were very similar to what has been working for me over in Tampa lately.

And I picked two specific spots to fish.

Duration: About 5 to 7 minutes

The Results From The Trip (VIDEO)

Here’s a video that shows what happened while out on the water.

Best of all, it highlights the biggest mistake that I made as well as the best thing that I did to ensure that I was able to maximize the amount of fish caught in the first spot that I picked out to fish.

Related Links:

– See Insider Report from this trip: Click to see exactly where these fish were caught

– Inshore Fishing Manifesto Ebook: https://saltstrong.com/books

– Salt Strong Community: https://saltstrong.com

Conclusion

Forming a plan for your fishing trips can be extremely valuable in the long run because you’ll start to identify trends and you’ll be able to get better and better and matching finding the top feeding zones based on the conditions.

It is what has given me the confidence to have full faith that I’ll at least catch something even on short trips to regions that I’ve never been to before…

And even when I’m only armed with a cell phone, a paddleboard, a couple of rods, and a couple of lures.

The key is to know the core trends to design your plan around.

Here are two core ways to unlock the essential core trends:

1. Fish more often
2. Join the Salt Strong Super-Community to simply get the core trends intel from us

Note: The best way to super-charge your results would be to do both of these at the same time.

P.S. – If you think your angler friends or fishing networks would like to see this, please Tag them or Share this with them. You Rock!