A broken commitment on Monday, and big winds on Tuesday, kept me away from the water until Wednesday. It was my first trip with Rob Bibb and his son, Zach?, of Warner Robbins, Georgia, and I hoped I could put together a good one for them.
After a rough weather day on Tuesday, the weather was still questionable Wednesday morning. The forecast was for storms after 2 PM, but it looked as it the weather Gods had other plans. We loaded up and headed up to Chino Island for bait, keeping a vigilant eye on the sky as we went. Once there, I anchored in about 4 ft. of water over good turtle grass bottom, and gave Roy a little chumming instruction. He took over, and we pretty quickly had lots of bait showing up. It was a mix of very nice shiners, a few threadfins, plenty of small pins, some ballyhoo, and more than enough net plugger shiners about 2 inches long. We had about half as much bait as I wanted to fish with when both my lightning detector and the sky to our southwest told me it was time to head south. We had storms coming in off the gulf, and there was some big lightning in them.
We got down to the St. James City area, which was about five miles from where we'd been, and with what seemed a safe distance from the storm that appeared to be moving northeast, again anchored and began chumming with the rest of the fleet that was there trying to catch bait. It didn't take long to finish loading the big well in the Talon, and by the time we did, the storm seemed to have blown itself out, and the coast looked clear.
We headed north back up the east side of the Sound and settled on a small mangrove key that usually offers safe harbor to snook and redfish. In the spring it can hold monster trout and big flounder. Although we did have some hits and damaged bait, including one shiner cut cleanly in half by a barracuda, the only thing we got were some tangled lines. I didn't like the first indicators.
We moved on, settling on a very small spot in the middle of nowhere that I love to fish. It is for the most part ignored by other guides and anglers, but can be full of all manner of fish including snook, redfish, trout, grouper, jack crevalle, jewfish, and snapper. It can be a real smorgasbord. But, on this day it gave us only one snook, and a few missed hits before things went quiet.
We moved on to a flat where I've been catching beautiful redfish for several months, now. We chummed and fished our way in, but the only thing we could get interested in our baits was hard-head catfish. Arrgh! Negative style points for those! We moved on.
We put some water between that and the next spot, more for psychological reasons than anything else. We settled on a great spot that always has snook on it when the water gets really high. There, we managed to catch a nice snook, a redfish, and a bonnet-head (shovel-nose) shark of about 3 ft. in length. But, we just couldn't get the snook that were there to engage their appetites and bite. We moved on once again.
We hit several more spots without any action, and finally settled on what would be our last spot of the day. With the right setup you can fish and catch both snook and redfish. It was crunch time. Roy needed fish to feed the gang, and although we'd caught snook and a redfish, we had only one 19" redfish in the well with all that bait. We had shiners and pinfish for bait. We put one free-lined shiner out, and two pieces of cut pinfish out at about 90 degrees from each other.
We didn't have long to wait before one of the pinfish rigs went off. Roy brought in a beautiful 26.5 inch redfish, and after some celebration it went into the well. A short time later another rod went off, and Zach had a battle with another 26.5 inch redfish. We had filled our food order in just the nick of time, as the tide soon quit running, and the bite stopped. We were happy to have more than enough redfish to feed the gang back at the condo, and decided to head to the Waterfront Restaurant for lunch, and then if weather permitted, do some more fishing on the backside of lunch.
But, Mother Nature had other ideas. As we made the ride to the Waterfront, I could see several cells building all around us. I commented to Roy that the weather seemed to be closing in around us, and that was reason enough to head to the Waterfront. As we enjoyed our lunch the weather moved in. I watched the radar on the flatscreen at the end of the bar with great interest. The bright red/orange cells weren't moving. Rather, they were just mushrooming, and getting bigger and bigger. It was obvious we weren't going anywhere as we watched the rain come down, and listened to the thunder outside.
We ate. We sat. We sat. Zach had ice cream. We sat, and waited. Finally, after nearly three hours, it looked clear and safe enough to run to the ramp. It was still raining. The lightning detector was finally pretty quiet, and we headed for home. It was pushing 4 PM by the time we got in and got the fish cleaned. But, it had been a long, interesting, and fun day with a great father-son team.