My friend of many years and fishing trips, Dr. John Hitt, was up on Monday, and I was looking forward to seeing him. His duties and schedule at UCF have gotten in the way of his fishing so far this year. We pulled away from his dock around 0645 hrs. and headed down the river towards the Tarpon Bay flats for bait. There was a handful of boats there already working on bait when we arrived. It only took John and I about half an hour to chum the bait in and load the well in four tosses of the net. We left the others there still chumming.
John's first order of business was food for the table. A limit of trout is only four fish, but if they're top of the slot fish and include one trophy over 20 inches you can still bring enough home to feed the gang well. We headed to an area where the trout like to concentrate along an edge. It's better on the falling tide, and the fish are usually very nice. We were on the first of the incoming, but the fish were there. They just weren't going to give us a hot bite. But, we had a good enough bite that we were able to put a limit and a half in the well, and fill the food order for John and me. We caught plenty that didn't make quite the cut, as well.
After that, we turned our attention to snook and redfish, and things got hard. At our first stop where we should have spanked the snook, John missed one fish and then bagged a nice flounder, that went into the well. That was the last fish we caught for the rest of the morning. We hit snook hole after snook hole, and practically every bait we tossed was scaled by the persnickety snook. But, we never got one to actually eat. We were on fish! Frustrating, to say the least.
John needed to get back relatively early so that the boat would have time to thoroughly dry before putting the canvas on, so we headed in around noon. We had plenty of meat, but were skunked on the snook and redfish. But, although pretty breezy, it had been a nice day to be out with an old friend.
After watching it blow for three days it was time for a much anticipated trip with George E. Buchness (G.E.B.) pronounced Butchness. Geb explained that because of the pronunciation of his last name he and his son, Brett, are both called Butch. I think it was the first time I ever had three Butches in the boat! For the sake of minimized confusion, we stuck to Geb and Brett.
Geb had tried to book with me before, and has been a fan of my reports, and I really wanted to deliver a good snook trip. Geb's first order of business was food for the table, which meant trout and maybe a redfish or two, but he also wanted to catch some snook. We had a slow moving incoming tide from around 9:30 to 2:00, but it would be a very high tide because it was starting from a half-way full point. The barometer was also very high, but the wind was supposed to finally be down to 8 to 13. I was in hopes the big tide would be enough to have the snook on the prowl.
With the northeast breeze still prevailing and an hour or more of outgoing tide left, the conditions were perfect for the trout in the same place John and I had fished them Monday. Although the boys had been a bit late arriving, we again dispatched the bait catching in record time with the expert chumming by Geb and four throws of the net, and were quickly at our trout spot.
We had a great trout bite for the rest of the outgoing tide. Our shiners were routinely eaten within a few seconds after hitting the water. It didn't take long to fill the food order for all of us, with 8 nice keepers in the well, and plenty of fish that didn't quite make the cut. Predictably, the bite tapered off around 9 AM, and it was time to move on.
It was time to turn our collective attention to snook and redfish, and at the first stop Brett landed a nice 5 pound snook, after watching several snook blow up our first live chum. I thought we were going to finally have a good snook bite, but after that first fish all they did was blow up on the bait or scale it. The fish were there, but even once the tide was moving as well as it was going to, they still wouldn't eat. We moved on to another typically great hole. There we had a bluefish take our bait and cut the line near the boat. We also put a couple of ladyfish in the well for later use as redfish bait, and caught another keeper trout.
At our next stop we again started with some popping on our chum, and I thought we might have a good bite. We missed a snook, a grouper, and another bluefish, and Brett caught a keeper redfish and a snapper, which gave Brett his SLAM! After that is was scaled baits only, and we moved on, again.
We worked our way north hitting several spots with nothing but scaled baits and some popping on the chum. We had snook everywhere we went, but they just didn't want to eat. We moved back south to a spot that I though would now be loaded with snook, but hard to fish because of the wind direction. Man, was it full of snook, and some big females, too. We saw plenty of them milling back and forth, and if the boys had any doubts earlier, they were surely dispelled. But, we caught nothing there!
We moved on to what would be the last area we would fish for the day. The water was beautiful and things looked really fishy. We fished our shiners and put out a chunk of ladyfish steak to see if we could lure in a redfish. Nothing. I moved the ladyfish closer to the cover, and it wasn't long before it was picked up by a snook, which Geb manhandled to the boat. After that snook we couldn't buy another bite, but at that point it was because the tide was winding down.
Someone mentioned food, and it only took a moment for us to decide we were hungry and ready for the Waterfront Restaurant. I worried that the trip had not lived up to Geb's expectations, and hoped that the Waterfront Restaurant would! Geb and I went for the calamari, which is my favorite menu item. It wasn't as heavily garliced as it usually is, but Geb assured me that both the food and the trip had lived up to his expectations.
It had been a very enjoyable day for me with Geb and Brett, and I felt like I'd known them for years. I threw a lot of new stuff at them, but they were great students, and did just fine. If we could just have gotten a good snook bite going there would have been much more opportunity to teach them the tricks of the snook trade, but two snook didn't give us much chance to do that. Geb promised to be back for another go at it next year. I sure hope things are normal next spring.