After watching for several days the weather forecasters dance all over what was going to happen on Monday, the picture began to gain clarity by Saturday, and I contacted my old buddy Jim Turman to confirm moving our trip from Monday to Sunday. It was obvious it was going to blow Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, as well as storm on Monday. Sunday would bring south winds, and if I'm going to fish in a big wind, I want it to be south. At least then, most of the time the fish will eat well.
I was very early, and watched a number of boats go out under the causeway straight into the already stiff south wind, and turn around and come back. One was an F-20 Talon that I hadn't seen before. I was shocked that he turned around, given the reputation the F-20 has for eating up rough water. I watched a couple go for it, and all I could see in the early dawn light was the white of big spray coming off the hulls. It was nasty out there. I pondered what I would do as I waited on Jim, who was bringing his friend Ed for his very first fishing experience.
I'd been down to Jim's condo and spent the night on Thursday, and spent the evening with Jim and his good friends Retta, who used to be Jim's big rig co-driver, and her husband Ed. They're all down from Iowa. Jim and I have been fishing together for years, and he's a blast. Ed had agreed to come on this trip, and had absolutely no previous fishing experience. I knew he'd do well.
With Jim and Ed aboard we headed out to the bridge to see just how bad it was. I pointed the Talon into the wind and idled under the bridge. It was pretty nasty, but I knew I could get out a safe distance from the bridge, turn to the west and launch, and then slip and slide on the rollers to the B span. Once inside the B span, it would be relatively calm. And, that's what we did. Jim, unfortunately, was on the windward side, and got a bit wet, but it's impossible to keep the person on the windward side dry in slop like that, no matter what you're in. We made our way to Tarpon Bay flats, where we found probably a dozen boat working on catching bait. As luck would have it, the boat closest to the spot I like to anchor on was the Talon F-20.
We went to work. I chummed long enough to see what the wind/water combo were doing, and the chum flow was from right to left across our bow, coming at us. Jim took over the chumming, and after no more than ten minutes, I threw the 8 ft. Daddy Pat net, and pulled in a load. By the time I got that put into the well, there was bait flicking all over in front of us.
I got out the 10 ft. net Daddy Pat had recently made for me, and gave it a toss. With that bait in the well, I could have, and probably should have left. But, I figured I'd throw one more time just to top off the tanks. Holy cow. Jim had that bait in there and going crazy, and I could hardly get the net pulled over the gunwale! We had enough bait for a week of fishing!
Jim had given me as our primary mission, to put plenty, or as much fish in the boat for eating, as possible. Right now, that means speckled trout, and hopefully a redfish per angler to top things off. So, our first stop with a trout spot that gave us the opportunity to have the wind at our backs and current in our face, which means a proper presentation of our live baits.
Once there and at our first stop on the long edge, we were immediately in action, but it was ladyfish action. We caught a few and put two or three into the well for possible use as redfish bait later. I moved us up about the length of a long cast and anchored. As if we'd crossed over some line, we were now in small jacks. Even 10 to 12 inch jacks are a blast, and pull like freight trains, as Ed soon found out. But, we were looking for trout.
I moved us up again, and now we were getting cut off by mackerel! Then there were more jack and ladyfish. I moved up one more time declaring that if we didn't hit the trout I was certain were there, we would move on. And, wah-lah. We started catching trout. I quickly lost track of how many trout we had in the well, but I though it was six. We'd caught plenty of shorts, too. We decided to move on to another spot that usually has outsized trout this time of year.
The water in that spot was just blowing in, aided by the strong south wind. I had a hard time trying to get the boat situated how I wanted it. Finally, I decided to just use the trolling motor to try to hold position. That worked OK until Jim hooked a monster jack crevalle. What a battle! Jim said he wouldn't want to do too much of that. Shortly afterward, I hooked in to a monster that also turned out to be an even bigger jack of nearly 9 pounds. I haven't seen many big jacks around at all in the last couple of years, and forgot how tough they are. Once we had him landed, I suggested we move on before we hooked into another one. Of course, the real reason was that we had established the big trout weren't there, and the big jacks were. We wanted more fish for the cooler.
It was around ten o'clock, and I couldn't believe how quickly the wind had driven the water way up. I told Jim it was time to go redfish/snook fishing. But, for the next hour or so we didn't have the first redfish or snook bite. Ed managed to snag a ballyhoo reeling in, and we put that straight out there for redfish. But, Ed instead caught a beautiful five pound trout. Hmmm. We were doing pretty well at filling our food order. But, I couldn't believe that we fished about five spots only catching that big trout.
We made another move to an area I love to fish for reds, but had not fished in a long time. It was fast approaching noon and the witching hour for the tide. We fished several spots in the area with not so much as a bump, but did have some bait scaled by snook. I made one more move to slightly deeper water. I again put out a ballyhoo, a ladyfish steak, and a live shiner. At this point the wind was really building, and it was very difficult to fish. What happens is that the wind and the action of the water tend to pull all the lines toward straight down the wind, and tangle them up. And, we had some of that, for sure.
But, we hung in there and it wasn't long before Ed casually said, "I think I've got something!" Those words were quickly followed by the sound of a happy Stella 3000 screaming in redfish ecstasy. I could see the fish boiling and smacking its tail in the shallow water, and knew we had our first redfish of the day. It was a beauty, and we measured it half dozen times, holding it different ways, to make sure it wasn't over 27 inches. It was right there, and went into the well.
Not long after that, Jim had another redfish on, both so far on the live shiners, and boated a beautiful keeper of 25 inches. Oh, if we could just get one more, so I could have some, too. Redfish is my favorite fish to catch, and eat, from our waters. After a short time, I witnessed a huge blow on top of the water, right where Jim's shiner was. Holy cow. It looked like someone had dropped a concrete block in the water from a hundred feet up. But, it missed the bait. I quickly re-baited Jim's rig, and he tossed it right back to the spot. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three. Boom! Fish on, and it was the fish of the day. It gave Jim a workout, but ultimately he brought her to the boat and the Boga Grip. She was 9 pounds and just shy of 30 inches. She had to go back. But, Jim had gotten his final workout of the day, and great pictures. We decided it was time to leave on a high note, and try to get in before the wind kicked any more. It had been building all morning, and was well into the 20's.
It wasn't a bad ride home at all. I stayed as close to the manatee buoys as possible, and stayed out of the worst of the rough stuff. Then I took the inside route from B span to A span, which kept us out of the rough stuff. The ride across the mouth of the river was a piece of cake.
We had lots of fish to clean. The boys let me keep a redfish fillet, a trout for me, and a trout for my yard man. They still had a bag of fish that went about 8 pounds. It hadn't been an easy day, but it was a fun a productive day with one of my favorite fishing buddies. And, in typical fashion, Ed had done great, as he brought no bad habits from back home to the boat.
Tuesday morning, I woke up around 2 AM! Strangely, my HP dv8t quad beast that lives on a cart next to my bed, awoke a couple of minutes after I did, without me getting near it. Spooky. Maybe it was peeking at me through the web cam! Firefox was still on the screen where I'd left it, and I was treated to a large mass of red and orange on the NWS radar loop. It was at around Punta Gorda. I figured it would be on us within a couple of hours. I tried my best to go back to sleep, but I love a good thunder boomer, and it wasn't long before I could see lightning lighting the clouds from a distance, and hear the faint rumble of thunder. I was glad I'd run my trip with Jim and Ed, Sunday.
By 5 AM it was close, and beginning to rain. By 6 AM it was storming so hard, with constant lightning and thunder, and horizontal sheet rain, it seemed it might be the end of the world as we know it. Man, what a storm. I got up, got dressed, and drove down to the ramp with a Bubba Keg full of coffee. I was almost amazed there was no one there. There's almost always some crazy out in stuff like that! None of the guides had bothered to even show up. I sat there for over an hour just enjoying one of the biggest electrical storms I've seen in years. I thanked God I wasn't caught out in it. I've been caught in four or five severe storms like that, and it's one of the scariest things that can happen to you. You get the overwhelming feeling that you are certainly going to die. The weather finally began to break around 9 AM.
Monday night I talked to Tom Sutton, my customer for Tuesday. I had been watching the weather forecast for Tuesday with obvious great interest, fully expecting to see a big wind forecast after such a front. It's pretty much an automatic thing......A rule of nature. But, the forecast continued to be for west breeze 8 to 11. I knew instinctively it was BS. I told Tom I fully expected to wake up to a very different forecast, but the weather guys just weren't ready to give it up, yet. I told him I'd call him if there were any revisions. Otherwise, I'd meet him at 7 AM.
Tom and I have already canceled and rescheduled several times this year because of all the bad weather. He is a hoot to talk to, and I know we're going to have a good time out there together, but when I told him of the revised forecast, he was all for rescheduling again. We had a lake advisory, which calls for winds 20 to 30 MPH. Not a good day to be out in a flats boat. I really want to meet this guy! Guess it will wait until late May.
The forecast for Wednesday was breezy, but much improved from Tuesday, for Warren Beachy and me. Warren and I had also rescheduled his trip a couple of times trying to find a descent day before he headed back to Alaska. Looked like we'd finally get a shot. I was pretty sure the catching was going to be tough, as we were on the second day behind the front, and right on top of the full moon. But, Warren told me he didn't much care if we caught anything! He just wanted to learn about our fishing.
Somehow, Warren managed to sneak by me while I was in the van trying to stay away from the mosquitoes. I noticed someone standing down on the dock in the general vicinity of my boat while talking to Steve Waugh, and thought, "Oh, no! That's probably him!" It was. It was also great to finally meet Warren.
We headed right over to Tarpon Bay where bait had been so good Sunday, expecting to quickly dispense with bait catching. The rest of the fleet was still there working. There was quite a bit of boat jockeying going on, which told me the bait wasn't coming in well. And, once we went to work chumming and throwing, we proved that to be true. Bait was tough. It took a good twenty throws to load the well.
Warren did say he'd like to try to have a fish or two for dinner. I wanted to get that out of the way early on, and headed to a trout area I like to fish. We caught a few nice trout, and put the required meat in the well, as well as showing him how to fish an area like that. At our next stop we didn't score a fish as we looked for snook and trout along the mangroves. We didn't stay long.
Our third stop was a snook hole I love to fish, and the snook are there, but they've not been willing to eat other than a fish or two at a time. We did managed to catch another keeper trout there, though. We moved on, again, and found a bit of action at our fourth stop. Warren caught one snook, lost another, caught a keeper mangrove snapper, and had quite a few blows on the chum before it slowed, and we moved on.
From there we went looking for redfish. We struck out at our first two spots, both of which are great for reds as well as snook. What you catch usually depends on where you position your bait. So, we made what would be the last stop of the day, and finally found one redfish that would eat. Now, it was our turn.
We headed to the Waterfront Restaurant where Warren and I had a great meal and a great time talking about a little bit of everything. It was the perfect end to a beautiful day on the water with a really super guy.
Thursday was the nicest day of the week to be on the water, I think. The wind was down more, and it was pretty overcast. My trip was with Rick Vollmer, of St. Augustine, Florida, who had booked on pretty short notice. I'd told him how tough the fishing had been except right on a front, but it didn't dissuade him at all. He still wanted to go. Once Rick was at the dock and we'd met and talked a bit, I knew we would have fun. And, I learned he had a lot of history in Ft. Myers.
I pointed us at the Brown House for bait. I didn't want to have to throw that net as much as I'd thrown it the day before, and hoped to find bait plentiful there. Well, it was zip, zero, nada. Not a shiner. Hell! Not more than a pinfish or so. Back to Tarpon Bay we went! It was more of the same, there. It took a long time to get the shiners to show up in groups larger than half a dozen. The water was doing strange things, and seemed to be moving briskly at the bottom. We just kept at it, and I felt around the chum line with the net, and finally we got enough bait to fish with. It sure wasn't easy, though.
By the time Rick and I'd caught bait, we'd pretty well hit it off. We shared a lot in common. He also was interested in putting some dinner into the well, and my first stop was chosen with that in mind. The tide was still low enough to do a little pothole fishing, and we caught some nice trout for the table, and one mackerel, there.
Once that spot slowed down we moved on to a hole that generally has snook as well as big trout this time of year. We did get some snook pops on our chum, but only caught one nice trout there. Situation normal. The fish weren't eating. After working the fairly large area over well, we moved to another hole nearby. We had more snook blows there, and Rick got one nice snook right at the boat before it managed to get away. As we prepared to move on, Rick was treated to the sight of many, many snook in that hole, most of which appeared to be 30 to 40 inches in length!
We moved on much farther north from there, where we were greeted with lockjaw at two beautiful places. But, you can bet your bottom dollar every bait we tossed at those snook came back scaled. We headed to a place where I'd found lots of big snook and trout on a previous trip, and had Slammed repeatedly there. We'd finish our day there.
We'd not been there long when I saw a big dark green female glide by in front of us. They were still there. But, the snook just gave us the fin. We did catch some very nice trout to 5 pounds, though, which seemed to please Rick. Once the tide turned and we fished the first part of the outgoing, we called it a day and went to the Waterfront for a late lunch. We had a great time there, and Rick agreed the calamari was the best he'd had.
It was a very tough day, yet we'd had a blast and managed to catch some fish and put a good dinner in the well. In fact, it had been a great week with old friends, and new friends alike. I was supposed to fish with my old friends Texas Waders Ron and Pat Hunter on Friday, but we decided to reschedule the day once again because the wind forecast was back up, and the bite was so tough. Ron lives an hour and a half away, and can pick his days. And, that was the week.