What was supposed to be a six day work week wound up being four when all was said and done. The red tide is still around, but the situation has improved, and we were able to keep bait alive and put some fish into the boat most of the time.
My friend Eric Smith was first up on Sunday. We were supposed to fish Friday, but a bout with kidney and gall stones had him heading to the hospital. The trip was to get Eric and his nine year old son Bronson out for a day of fishing that involved some catching, so we moved our day up to Sunday.
Bronson is just too cute a kid, and showed up dressed to the nines for the occasion. At nine, he's already got a lot of hunting under his belt, and loves to fish, and is aspiring to be a hunting or fishing guide. His dad had him all dressed up in embroidered fishing clothes that displayed "J & B Guide Service" on them.
We headed off in near darkness toward the Marker 32 Bar. The ride through the cool morning air as the sun painted the horizon with strokes of orange and pink was exhilarating. It's my favorite part of the day. Along the way we stopped on the flats in front of York Island and chummed for bait for a few minutes. We didn't see a living thing except for a pinfish. But, bait came quickly once we were in place at marker 32, and soon we were ready to point the Maverick toward the first fishing hole.
Fishing was by no means easy, but it was fun, and we caught some nice fish. We headed to Charley's Pass to a spot where I'd had a good bite recently, but after fishing and looking around for a while it appeared to be a dead zone. I imagine the red tide had run the fish out of there. At the next spot the boys missed a couple of snook. And, a move to a nearby spot gave us one snook. It was a slow start, and I decided to go to a completely different neighborhood.
It was a good move, as Eric boated his biggest snook at 8.5 pounds and 31 inches. And, Bronson got his first redfish, which made him quite happy. But, the action was short lived on our slow moving tide, and we moved on in search of moving water.
At the last stop of the day we found the action we'd been looking for in the form of feisty mangrove snappers and hard fighting jack crevalle. Eric and Bronson caught a bunch of snapper and several jacks before we succumbed to the heat and called it a day. It had been a fun day.
My Monday trip was the first with Patrick Drennan, and his Dad, Steve. Pat was down to visit his folks who now live in Cape Coral. Patrick had been understandably concerned about fishing in the red tide. I had explained to him that we couldn't stay in business if we canceled our trips every time conditions weren't perfect. I think he came to the dock with pretty low expectations, and he told me that he'd been disappointed with a couple of previous guide experiences.
We found bait to be easy at #32 that morning, and we had no problem keeping it alive. Even though I put quite a bit of bait in the Talon's well, it showed no sign of being stressed. It appeared that the red tide situation was improving.
At our first stop we had some pretty good action. Patrick and Steve caught snook, redfish, and snapper! Oddly, the bite was best before the tide began moving, and right afterward. Once it was coming in well, it was over. From Patrick's comments, the trip had already exceeded his expectations.
Once the action was over we moved on to a different area several miles away. We had to fish around the area for a while, but finally found some more action, and finished our morning right there. As we neared the noon hour we lost what breeze we had, and suddenly it was brutally hot. We decided to head in, having had a good morning of fishing. But, when I hit the ignition switch on the Talon it wouldn't turn over. The batteries appeared to be dead. Damn!
I quickly checked the obvious stuff like connections and loose wires, but saw no problems. I turned off bilges and baitpumps, but she still wouldn't crank. I've been carrying jumper cables in the Talon for the five years we've been together, and this was the first day I'd needed them. To be honest, I'd almost forgotten about them. Once I got them hooked up to one of my trolling motor batteries, the engine still barely turned over. I couldn't believe it. But, I was determined to either get the engine cranked, or burn that battery trying. I kept the key turned and the choke on, and finally the Yamaha sprang to life in a cloud of smoke and noise. There's no better sound to a fisherman than that of his motor starting!
We headed home, afraid to take a chance at stopping for lunch or one last cast. As we rode Patrick told me it had been his best guide trip by far, and that they had caught a lot more snook and redfish than he had imagined they would. Needless to say, I was a happy Captain.
Thinking my batteries had just been low from the Talon having been on vacation, I charged them overnight. That night, I realized that my customer for Tuesday, who on July 2nd, had booked a trip for he and his wife for their anniversary, had not sent his deposit as he had promised to do. I didn't automatically think the worst, as I had fished with him last August. But, after trying to reach him via cellphone and leaving a message that went unanswered, I knew I had let one fall through the cracks. Till yet, I haven't had the courtesy of a call or an email with an explanation. So, I had an unexpected day off.
Wednesday morning started on a bad note. I put the Talon in the water at 5:10 AM, and when I hit the key the batteries were dead. How could this be? The charger had showed them charged. My customers were Stuart Troutman, and his nephew Shane, of Sebring, and Stuart's brother-in-law, Allen, visiting from Colorado. I had never done three anglers in the Maverick, but I was about to!
I scrambled to get the Talon on the trailer, and get back to the boatyard to get the Maverick. I didn't know if I could do it in what was now a half hour. With no engine I had to get into the water to get the Talon trailered. I moved everything to the Maverick in the darkness, hoping I wasn't overlooking something crucial in my haste. I pulled into the ramp at 6 AM, just as Stuart and the boys were unloading.
I explained what had happened and apologized for having to take them in the Maverick, The boys assured me it would be fine, and we would make do. I wasn't even sure how the boat would react to four people aboard and a full baitwell. The 4-blade prop I have on her is probably a bit much, but is fine with one or two anglers. Fortunately, these guys were slim and trip, and not 245 pounders like me, and the boat got up on step without much ado.
I decided to head out to marker #32 again for bait. I had been trying not to crowd the bait all week, in hopes that if we got into bad water we wouldn't loose them all before we could get to good water. Once we had enough to fish with, we headed to the first hole of the day.
We were immediately in the action. The boys caught lots of nice mangrove snapper and several snook. Allen got the best fish, a 30 inch snook. It was quite a fish for a Colorado trout fisherman, and proved to be Allen's miracle fish. We were sitting right next to the shoreline, and Allen's snook hit down the shoreline just a few feet from the mangroves. That meant he was fighting the snook parallel to the shoreline, and had very little control over the fish. Of course, the first thing the snook did was take off in search of freedom in the mangrove roots. I went into overdrive coaching mode, telling Allen to get is rod deep into the water. It was his only chance of saving that fish. He didn't understand what I was trying to teach him, at first, but he quickly executed my instructions and the fish was still there. We just didn't know where there was! Once I got him pumping and reeling with the rod in the water the snook emerged from the mangroves not far from the boat.
But, she wasn't done just yet. She managed to get herself into a mangrove limb hanging in the water. Fortunately, there wasn't a lot of growth on it, and the Power Pro held. Finally, she was clear of the mangroves, but desperately trying to get back to them. At that point I think Allen thought he had the fish beaten, but this was his first experience with snook. He had another angling lesson to learn when she dove for the trolling motor. When the fish is near the boat, you can't control the fish with your rod up in the air, and Allen soon found that out as she wrapped herself around it twice. Fortunately, the fish was pretty well fatigued and didn't have enough juice left to break off. Once we got her untangled she was in the boat. We were all thrilled with that fish, and high-fiving all around. It was a nice 30 inch snook, and the smile on Allen's face says it all. By the time the bite was over there I realized that half our bait had expired. We would have to catch bait, again. We headed out to #32, where although it wasn't easy, we got enough bait to finish the day. That is, assuming we could keep it alive. At the next stop we found some more snook action, and had several redfish swirl on our baits. We caught several more snook, but couldn't get a redfish to the boat. At this point is was late in the morning, and the heat had the weather bubbling up early. I opted to try to finish the day close to the ramp, so if we had to run from the weather, we'd be close.
AT the next stop we managed a mangrove snapper. With the tide done and the weather looking threatening, we opted to head to the dock. It had been a tough, but fun day with the guys. But, four people in the Maverick had been about like a bunch of monkeys trying to play basketball! It's not something I'll do again on purpose.
My Thursday trip was with Cal Santarelli, who lives here in Ft. Myers, and his 15 year old son, Dain. We had first fished together about this time last year.
I decided to go to Picnic Island for bait. There were a couple of other boats there. One was my friend Capt. Maxie Stanford. It didn't take much chumming to get plenty of shiners in, but as we were filling our well Maxie shouted over to me that his bait was suddenly dying. Our bait appeared to be doing OK, but as Maxie took off in search of uninfected water, our bait began to die. Leaving cleanup for later we scrambled north hoping to save our bait.
I decided to go ahead and fish with what we had, and see how the bait looked by the time we got up into the Sound. After a quick cleanup we were in the fishin position, and on a good bite. Cal and Dain caught quite a few nice sized snapper, and several snook. Dain got the best fish at 27 inches. We made sure the bite was over before moving on.
It was getting late in the morning, and again I felt it was a good plan to get closer to the ramp. At the first stop we managed to boat one snook and one snapper. We had fish popping our chum, but not our baited hooks. We moved on to a pretty spot a couple of miles away that usually has snapper, snook, or jacks. Sometimes all of them together. As I was getting the Power Pole deployed I looked down and saw big school jacks darting in every direction. WE didn't even have the rods out, yet. I grabbed some bait and tossed it to try to hold the fish. They just destroyed every shiner I'd thrown, crashing them on top. From that point I think every bait we tossed was eaten. Unfortunately, so was one of our jacks. Cal had been fighting the fish when suddenly the line went limp. A shark about five feet long had bitten off his back half, and was still milling around looking for the rest of his meal. After taking a picture, we gave it to him. It was a great bite while it lasted, and I think we had 3 rounds of 3 fish on at a time. Those jacks that run 7 to 10 pounds can really burn your arms on light tackle, and by the time we'd caught that many Cal and Dain had had enough. It was a great way to end the day.
Friday morning I got the Talon down to Danny at Fowler Marine, and he quickly determined that one of my batteries had shorted out, pulling down the other one. He replaced both batteries, and went through all the charging circuitry from the engine to the batteries, replacing terminals, etc. She was ready by noon, and I just barely got into the van before the first of three vicious rounds of thunderstorms hit. The second round came in the afternoon, and the last one in the evening just before dark. Man, what great electrical storms!
But, the forecast was for more of the same on Saturday as a tropical wave moved in over the state. I was concerned for my trip with Bill Nueease and his wife and daughter. Saturday morning I was up at 3 AM. I fired up the radars and surely didn't like what I was seeing. We had a line of storms about a hundred miles long just to the south around Naples, storms popping up and dying over the state inland, and storms on the east coast. The radar was very active, and I would have bet my bottom dollar we'd have storms that morning before 8 AM. I really needed to work, but I felt the prudent thing was to cancel the trip. There's so much lightning in our summer weather, I just didn't want to risk getting stranded out there with Bill and his girls. Bill had also told me Friday night that he had no desire to be out in rain. So, I began calling both his numbers to tell him I thought we should call the trip off. But, he wasn't answering either land or cell lines, so I headed down to the ramp at about 5:30. I caught him finally as they were coming across the causeway, at which point he told me he'd been struck by lightning and lived to tell of it.
Feeling sure I had done the right thing, I headed home anticipating early boomers. Now, don't you know that not only did we not get early thunderstorms, they finally came late in the afternoon and didn't amount to much. I was not a happy camper, as I rarely get the weather wrong.
That's how it went. I don't think the red tide will be around much longer. I wasn't seeing any fresh dead fish floating out there. It does break your heart to see snook floating, and I saw a few. Under the circumstances I'd say it was a pretty good week.
