A florida creekmouth with all the predator-attracting ingredients--flat, scalloped bay and slender, sandy dropofs into deep water.

Slow down son you’re running too fast. That caution didn’t derive from any personal lifestyle dilemma. It came from the lips of an old friend, who showed me the inshore saltwater ropes, as he wagged a crooked finger at a nondescript riverbank that I’d shot by time after time en route to my latest backcountry honeyhole.

Backing off the throttle, I saw what my fishing buddy pointed to. Against the spartina-and-oyster-specked shoreline, bait dimpled the surface—extremely nervous bait. Everything just looked right: Two points framed a crescent moon flat bordered by spartina grass along the shoreline of the Intracoastal Waterway. A fresh outgoing tide formed a small eddy where the current ran off a submerged oyster bar at the edge of an expansive mud-and-oyster flat that dropped quickly into the ICW channel.

I eased the skiff upstream and shut down the kicker so we could drift into casting range with the tide. “You plug the shallows and I’ll work the sloping dropoff,” my friend said, firing a 1⁄4-ounce yellow bucktail jig to the outside edge of the eddy.

I followed suit, except I dropped my topwater lure into a small opening between the spartina clumps on the shoreline. Twitch, twitch, pause. Twitch, twitch, pause. My lure disappeared into a frothy gulp. There’s nothing like getting your string stretched on the first cast to a new spot. I was just about to rub my fishy luck into my bud’s face, when I noticed that he, too, had a serious bend in his rod and a ton of line peeling off the reel.

Our doubleheader didn’t last long. The finny creature shaking its head on the business end of my tackle made a mad dash toward shore where it parted the line on a submerged oyster clump. The jig-hooked fish just kept boogying down the channel, seemingly unperturbed by my friend’s repeated attempts to turn its head with light gear. We followed his fish out to the middle of the channel, before it turned on the afterburners and beat its way back to shore where it wrapped his 10-pound mono around another clump of razor-sharp oysters. We didn’t land our first hookups, but this spot sure grabbed our attention right away. It was only after we landed a pair of stout seatrout that my fishing partner finally revealed that he’d fished this particular bank for years—and others like it up and down the ICW.

“So you’re a point man,” I kidded my now departed fishing mentor. “That’s right,” he retorted. “Always have been and always will be. Points like this are just too fishy to pass up, even if they are too close to the boat ramp. That’s why I don’t understand the reasoning most anglers draw upon as they scoot by searching for better fishing pastures.”

I had to admit, he had, well, a point. That morning, though a long time ago, changed my way of fishing. Now I see no sense in running past fishy honeyholes within casting distance of the ICW channel without at least firing a cast or three before moving on. I’ll treat ‘em as stop signs from here on out.

Later, I refined my approach by mounting a trolling motor on my skiff. Under electric power, checking riverbank points became quick and easy. And very productive. Even on days when fishing shallow, backcountry oyster flats didn’t pan out.

All ICW points, however, are not the same. To realize the potential of any certain spot, you need to know the lay of the land. Low tide is perfect for learning the particulars of the bottom—where the dropoff begins, the location of submerged oyster bars and how the bottom does or does not slope into the channel.