This week proved to be a wild weather week. Last week's rain and wind finally ushered in this record cold front, which sent temps dropping like the DOW for October record cold temperatures. Wind was also a problem. It blew pretty hard on Monday for my trip with George Chingery, but 30 MPH gusts were too much to fish in Tuesday with my old friend Dr. Ron Kolata. Fortunately, I had one available to rearrange on Thursday, which we were able to move him to. The fishing was predictably tough on Monday as the north wind blew in around the big high pressure settling in on top of us. It didn't get any better for the next few days.
George Chingery, who hails from Edison, New Jersey, showed up early for our Monday trip, and had along his cousin, Steve, who lives down in Islemorada, in the Keys. Ironically, George and I had been scheduled to fish together around this same time last October, when we had days of freak October weather that caused us to put off our trip no less than three times. Global warming?
We were early on the B span flats, but there was a string of boats there already hard at work on the bait. It was actually good to see that many boats out, most of which were guides. It has been almost spooky to arrive at the ramp and see no or only one or two other trucks there in the morning. The wind was already howling right down the pike out of the north. It was going to be a tough day! I wondered if we would even catch bait, as it seemed there was none being caught by the other boats that we could see.
We set about chumming, and quickly figured out the wind and current which were working well together to blow the water out of the bay at a very fast pace. We were having to toss our chum quite a bit to the right to get our bait in front of the boat. But, it did come, and came in spades. It wasn't another three toss day, but we were loaded to the gills in five tosses, and left the fleet behind as we headed off to our first stop.
I've been doing very well on the redfish for the last couple of months, and most of them have been eating live shiners. A few have been caught on cut ladyfish, which is frankly surprising. But, my gut was telling me today would be different, what with the passing of the front. So, we stopped on the Picnic Island flats to see if we could put a few ladyfish into the boat.
I found the edge and tossed a couple of bats full of chum. To my surprise, the bait were hit off the edge on the deep side of us, but they were there, and the bite was on. The ladyfish were smashing every bait, but can be hard to keep hooked, even with circle hooks. They were hitting so well though, it wasn't an issue. We quickly had 3 or 4 in the well, and opted to get on with trying to find some snook or redfish. We could have stayed right there and had a blast with the ladyfish for most of the morning, though.
Once we cleared San Carlos Bay and were in to the Sound, I realized the wind had really emptied out the bay. There was a lot of land out of the water. I think the guys might have had some anxious moments as we skimmed along in mere inches of water on the way to our first stop, and I used the skegg of the Yamaha as a brake once we arrived.
The tide was supposed to have been incoming for some time, already. But, it was laying still, being held up by the north wind. I knew it wouldn't be too long before it began moving, though. And, then we'd find out if the snook were going to eat, or not. After a while George broke the ice with a nice, scrappy snook, followed a few minutes later by a nice keeper trout. And, that was it. Not another hit, but a lot of scaled baits. The fish just didn't want to eat, but they were there.
We moved on to another spot that usually gives up nice snook and big trout this time of year. Again, it was nothing doing from our target species. We had lots of bait scaled by snook, and chewed by small snapper, but nothing that actually swallowed a bait. We moved on. At the next two stops it was more of the same. Lockjaw! What to do?
I was waiting on the water to get right to open up the possibility of redfish in a favorite spot where I've been really catching lots of them. But, I realized that with the strong north wind the water wasn't going to come as scheduled, and decided to go and work it hard. I knew the fish would either already be there, or come to my chum. I just didn't know whether they'd eat, or not.
It was time for our ladyfish. I was resolved to throw the kitchen sink at them if I had to. We had live shiners, pinfish, and ladyfish, which meant I could show the fish live shiners, live pins, cut pins, cut shiners, and steaked ladyfish. But, I was placing my bets on the ladyfish in these conditions.
George and Steve were very patient, and repeatedly acknowledged that cold fronts do their dastardly deed on fishing no matter where you are. The first bait in the water with a hook in it was a ladyfish steak. I'd chummed with live bait and cut threadfins, as well as ladyfish parts.
Bump. Bump! Something was wiggling the rod with the ladyfish on it. Would it eat? Usually, if a redfish will acknowledge a bait by moving it, he'll eventually eat it. And, after some messing around and thinking about it, the rod finally went off. We were celebrating our first redfish, but it soon became obvious that this was a big one. Probably too big. But, hey! We had our first red, and it was a beauty at over 29'. We settled for a picture and set her free.
Actually, for the rest of the tide we had a more than descent bite for such awful conditions. We boated 6 redfish, all keepers, and missed just as many. Had we done everything right we'd have boated twice as many. But, sometimes when things are tough, we get a little too anxious to get hooked up and wind up missing the fish, or letting it get away. We did both.
But, we were all happy and satisfied with what we'd managed to catch, and we had a limit of beautiful reds in the well, along with a nice trout. I knew it was over when the tide stopped dead in its tracks as if it had run into a dam! We decided to use the dead time to take in a lunch at the Waterfront. George had made me promise him that no matter what else we did, we'd take in the Waterfront. Mahi-mahi quesadillas were on the special board, and knowing how awesome J.D.'s quesadillas are, I went for that. The boys wisely followed my lead, and were glad they did.
Once done with lunch we headed out, and stopped at Clam Farms of SW Florida dock and picked up a few pounds of stone crabs for my friends the Kolatas, who I'd be fishing with for the next two days. The claws were just beautiful, and BIG!
We decided we'd hit one more spot to see if we could bag a snook or two, and headed up into a very nasty looking Matlacha Pass. Boy, it was ugly, and I'm sure I was breaking the speed limit in the channel in order to smooth out the ride. We fished a beautiful spot with the north wind at our backs. I did a lot of chumming, and we got one roll on a bait. The snook just weren't going to eat. It was time to head home.
Back at the dock we met Pat Kolata to deliver her crabs, and I cleaned fish for the boys. It had been a tough, but nonetheless great day with a couple of really great guys. They were patient with the tough conditions and very happy with the outcome. So was I.
After sitting out Tuesday as the wind raged all day, Ron Kolata and I were ready to take on what I knew would be a hard day. The wind forecast was for 10 MPH from the north, but I didn't believe that for a minute. No way was the wind going to drop that much overnight. By the time Ron and I got to the B span, it was blowing well over 10! And, there was no water! I wondered it there would be any bait at all.
I got the boat set up on the edge of the drop into the channel and began to chum. Geez! I couldn't believe how hard the water was running out of there. I looked to be every bit of 8 knots. I threw the net a couple of times and caught a few pinfish, and knew that this scenario wasn't going to work. I had to get out of some of that current. But, the water behind us was really shallow.
It took me a couple of times to get my setup right in the wind and current, but finally I got us out of the worst of the current with about a foot and a half in front of the boat. We went to work again. The first couple of tosses were again pinfish, but then some shiners showed up. I was beginning to think we weren't going to see any. We caught two or three dozen and suddenly they disappeared, and we were back to pinfish.
But, I knew the bait was around, and that we were doing something wrong. I had Ron toss the chum way out in front of the boat and to the right. I had a feeling that even in that dark water, we were asking the bait to come to close to the boat. It wasn't long afterward that I began to really hit the bait, and before we knew it we were loaded up. We had enough bait for two days of fishing.
After a quick cleanup, we were on our way to see if we could find some ladyfish as another bait option. But, after an hour or so of working several spots with live bait, we decided it was time to get serious about trout fishing. We worked our way across San Carlos Bay hitting spots as we went without seeing a fish. We had been fishing outside the barrier bar in different places with no results. Well, we caught one keeper trout. I decided it was time to go hit some potholes, where the fish would be more of a captive audience.
Our first hole proved to be the charm, and gave us almost two limits of beautiful keeper trout. And, then it stopped. We began pothole hopping, and couldn't draw another bite. Unbelievable! We hit a snook spot or two without so much as a look.
Finally, with the morning gone and lunch eminent, we hit some potholes deeper in the backcountry, and managed to complete our limit of trout. With our mission complete, we headed to the Waterfront Restaurant. It had been a tough, but fun and interesting day with one of my favorite fishing partners. The odd thing was that we had caught all our trout on Exude RT Slugs. We'd not had a shiner eaten all day long, nor had we had one chummed shiner eaten! We decided that we'd forgo catching bait Thursday morning, start a little later, and fish artificials for trout, again.
But, Thursday morning as Ron and I discussed plans, he said he had enough fish, and didn't care what we did. He just wanted to enjoy being out. Since it was blowing pretty hard, we decided to stay close to home and see if we could find some ladyfish, jacks, trout, mackerel action. And, we did. The fish were hard to find because we were drifting so quickly. We would be off the fish once we hooked one, by the time we could get the anchor down. But, we finally managed to get in them and have a descent bite for a while.
At around ten o'clock I suggested we go see if we could find a trout bite close to the Waterfront Restaurant, since we were going there for lunch, and also had to stop and pick up stone crabs claws just down the waterway. We decided to take a early fall look at Long Cut. It was full of fish, but it was mostly ladyfish that were eating our jigs. I did have one nice trout rise up on my jig right at the boat. It seemed the waters were infested with willing ladyfish!
Finally, we finished our day with another great lunch and a load of stone crab claws for dinner that night. And, that evening I joined Ron and Pat for dinner at their condo, and Pat worked her kitchen magic with her wonderful stone crab dip and the best speckled trout I've ever eaten, as well as other goodies. I hated to leave so early, but I had to work the next day.
This whole week will probably go down as one of the hardest in a long time for most guides. With the wind steady blowing, record cold low and high temps, and a barometer that hovered around 30.30 for days, it was nigh impossible to catch snook and redfish without going way up the river.
I told my customers, Blaine Stobinsky and his cousin David Kisseberth, of Toledo, Ohio, of how I saw the situation. I recommended we go with trying to find anything that would eat in this lockjaw situation we were in. They agreed.
We were blessed in that the wind was not up first thing Friday morning. We headed outside to see if we could find a ladyfish bite, and grab a few for possible redfish use later on the tide. Well, unlike the previous day, the fish were on a rampage. Blaine and Dave were hooking fish on practically every cast, and having a grand time with them.
We stayed with the bite until it was about time for the tide to turn up in the Sound. Meanwhile the wind was building. We managed to get to our destination before things got too bumpy, and managed three keeper trout out of the trout we caught. We had quite a few that were just short. The strange thing was that with all the wind that had been blowing and was now blowing again, the tide didn't actually begin moving until noon! When it did, the trout quit biting.
Looking for a good, hard pull on their lines, I opted to take them grouper fishing. The juvenile grouper seem to play by different rules than the fish that spend most of their lives on the flats. We had a great grouper bite, and the majority of the fish were around 18' and 3 to 3.5 pounds. They are a blast to catch and a real challenge to get out of their rocky homes with light tackle. I lost count, but estimate the boys caught 15 to 20 gags before it was over.
Once I realized that our tide had slammed into a wall and stopped, I told the guys I wanted to see if we could get a redfish to eat a chunk of ladyfish. I honestly didn't expect they would, but I wanted to find out for myself. We hit a couple of spots where the reds have been thick, and deployed three baits. The only thing that would bite them was catfish. That's so typical on slack water.
It was pointless to dunk more baits, and we headed home. Blaine and Dave told me that this had been the most fish they'd ever caught on a charter in Florida. They've done several trips in the Bradenton and St. Pete areas. I was thrilled to hear that, of course. But, I explained that although we'd done well for such tough conditions, it had not been a great day by our standards. That was not important. We were all happy with the day. And, back at the ramp I still didn't talk to anyone who'd managed to raise a redfish.
It had been a hard week; hard on the body and hard fishing. But, it had nonetheless been a fun week with great people. When Mother Nature shuts things down it's all about adaptation, and I'm guessing that's what we all did.