It's Sunday, the first day of a new week, and it's Memorial Day weekend. Roger Barry met me at the dock at 6:00 AM to try his luck for a second time. This time he brought his ten year old daughter Samantha, who was as cute as she could be. We had a low tide first thing in the morning. After catching bait I though I'd go fish some potholes along the edge of a flat that can be very productive, and wait on the tide to start flooding the flats. We hadn't been there but a few minutes when I notice redfish tailing everywhere out behind the boat in a foot of water. I told Roger that if he wanted to catch a redfish on fly, this was the perfect place to try to get it done. He rigged his rod and was out of the boat. I also went on foot with a spinner and a gold spoon, but the reds weren't interested, and they were pretty spooky. I told Roger I was going to go back to the boat, and move it onto the flat in position to chum the redfish into a feed. Roger fished his way toward the new position as I began chumming with shiners. By the time Roger was back in the boat, the reds were on the chum, and we had an absolute blast for the rest of the morning catching redfish two and three and a time. Samantha wasn't too sure about all this at first, as those reds were about all she could handle, but she soon got into the spirit of things, and was pumping and reeling like a little pro. I took plenty of time to resuscitate each fish before letting it go to in sure that we weren't killing any fish needlessly. Even with the long down time on each fish, we caught over 20 redfish up to 30 inches long, and an 18 inch trout. By the noon hour I think Roger and Samantha had had about enough.
Memorial Day Monday my friend Jay Pitha, who has a vacation home and boat on Roosevelt Channel, was back with his friends Jim Blake and John to learn more about how to fish the Sound. This lesson would be how to fish the shallow flats for snook and redfish. First I showed him how and where to catch beautiful shiners with very little effort. Then we went from spot to spot showing him where and how to set up to fish the spots. Jay, John, and Jim are mostly plug casters. Shiner fishing was a pretty new thing for them. They found out it can be very productive, but that it's not real easy keeping those snook attached to the other end of those light tackle rigs. By the end of the trip the boys had boated 4 nice redfish, 13 snook, and a ladyfish, and had lost 4 world class snook, and missed many, many hits. On the way home Jay commented that he'd been coming down here and fishing for six years, and never dreamed there would be so many fish in the places I'd shown him.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, were reserved for Wayne Crotty, of Kissimmee, Florida, and various members of his family each day. At least one day was supposed to be spent on tarpon. We had the better tides for flats fishing on the first two days, and by the second day we were totally overcast and conditions weren't very good for seeing tarpon, so we did Tuesday and Wednesday on the flats.
Tuesday it was Wayne, his 70 year-old dad Clyde, his uncle Cecil, and his 13 year-old son Kendal. After catching bait, I headed to the area I'd fished with Jay the day before, and found Jay and his buds already there chumming when we arrived. There are plenty of places to fish, so Jay and I agreed to stay in radio contact if either one of us got on fish. We caught a few snook on the earlier stage of the tide, but it wasn't until the tide really got high that I found the redfish. They had moved from their previous location, but not very far. From the time I pulled up on the spot we were hitting reds three and four at a time. I'll called Jay in on the radio. He came from a pretty good distance on his trolling motor, but still got there in time to catch some good action. He was afraid he was crowding me, which he wasn't, and moved down a bit. We kept the bite going until we were ready to call it a day. By then, Wayne, Kendal, Clyde, and Cecil had boated 6 snook, 3 nice trout, 3 good sized jacks, and 20 or more big redfish. I'm guessing they all missed as many as we caught. Jay and his crew did pretty well, too, I believe.
The next morning Wayne and Clyde were back for some more redfish action and serious coaching (abuse). The tide was almost an hour later, and laying flat for a good part of the morning, and I knew there wouldn't be much going on until the water started getting up good. When it did I, found the redfish in almost the exact same place as the day before. Redfish can be fairly predictable in that once you've found them on a flat, you'll often find them in the same place on the same stage of the tide. The three of us caught them non-stop again until we were ready to head to the ramp. The numbers for the morning we 20+ redfish, 3 snook, and 2 jacks boated, and a lot of missed fish.
Thursday was supposed to be our tarpon day. Wayne told me Wednesday that there would be six to fish, and that we'd need another boat. It was short notice, but I was fortunate to get Kevin Holley as the second boat. Kevin was going to take Wayne, Clyde, and Cecil tarpon fishing, and I was going to take the three kids snook and redfishing. But as I drove to the ramp in a hard rain that morning, I had a feeling it was going to be an all day rain. Wayne and the gang showed up, and Kevin showed up running from Matlacha in a heavy rain. The boys had a pow-wow and decided they didn't want to fish in the rain, which was covering the area well on radar, and headed back home. Kevin and Rey Rodriguez decided to fish in the rain, and I believe they jumped a couple of fish. I went just far enough in BarHopp'R I to make sure my new high speed pickups were going to work as designed. They worked too well, and within an eighth of a mile water was roaring out of both wells because it couldn't drain as fast as it was being high pressure injected into the wells. I headed back to Smith Marine with the news. I left the boat with Craig to have a couple of shutoff valves put in to allow me to regulate the intakes. It was a good day to catch up on my fishing reports and sleep, so that's how I spent the day. I picked the BarHopp'R up late that afternoon. I mentioned last week that I'd tell you how professionally Smith Marine handled this whole baitwell ordeal. Well, Craig never even suggested I pay him for any of the time that was spent doing and undoing the high speed pickups that were put in the tunnel. Now, friends, you can't ask for a business to be any fairer or responsible to their customers than that.
Friday, the last trip for the week, was with Bill Petree and Gary Ketchum, over from Sanford, Florida. I figured it was about time for the snook to be showing up back out on the outside again, so we went to check the beaches first. The snook were there in good numbers, but so were big trout and huge redfish. We were catching reds over 30 inches, and kept losing them on this one rig. It was tearing up the line. We lost 5 of the big reds before I finally figured out what was going on. One of the guide ceramics had split in half, leaving a very sharp edge exposed toward the incoming line. As soon as you put a deep bend in the rod, it was knarling up the line and breaking it. Gary had lost his balance earlier and went down with that pole in his hand. I suspect that the ceramic took a shot on the deck, because I hadn't had any trouble with it before that. Catching these big fish on such light tackle was a pretty new thing for Bill and Gary, so I did a lot of coaching through the morning. By the end of the trip they had boated 5 big redfish to 36 inches, lost 5 more, boated lots of snook, 6 trout, and a couple of jacks, too, I think. I may have to revise these numbers, as soon as I can get the official numbers from Bill and Gary. They took home 3 nice snook and 5 trout for the cooler.
So, there you have it. It was a great week of fishing with some really
great people. Hopefully, they all went home better anglers than when
they arrived, and I didn't nag 'em too bad.