Posts Tagged ‘trout’

Life had been conspiring for a long time to keep my buddy and I off a boat at the same time. It had been more than a year since we both had time to hit the flats together.

May 20th, my daughter and son had school things during the day so I took the day off. I wrapped up kid stuff early afternoon and made the call to Doug to see if he was still on for later in the day. Doug says “Dude, I’m ready now!”

Sweet–out the door I went. We hit the water around 2:30 and started catching fish almost immediately. Trout,redfish, jacks and ladyfish for about 5 hours. We didn’t catch any snook, but did see an upper slot fish and one monster snook. We ended the day with about a dozen trout, one red and several other fish.

On a side note, it was hot. Not just the air, but the water too. I haven’t had the temperature sensor on the boat calibrated, but, as you’ll see in the video, we were getting water temps from 86-92 degrees. Even if the sensor is off my a few degree, that is pretty warm for mid-May.

Here is the video from the trip. I had a great time. It was good to bend a rod with one of my best friends.

Finally, we got out with drama. I had been having a long run of bad luck, but this afternoon everything went well. James and I hit the water around 4 pm today.

Action was pretty steady. We ended with 5 trout, 1 jack and a spanish mackeral.

Here are a couple of pictures. Video and more picture soon.

I wish I had something good to say or a lighthearted comment, but unfortunately, the news is bad. The extended cold has cause a fish kill of historic scale.

The damage may be catastrophic. I have seen the snook cold before, but I have never seen the cold leave so many species dead and dying. In one small area, we saw snook, trout, tarpon, redfish, ladyfish, pompano, mullet, pufferfish, triggerfish, grouper, snapper and multiple types of baitfish lying dead in the water and on the shoreline. Frighteningly, this is a scene being repeated from one end of the state to the other and on both coasts.

We are currently waiting for this video to be vetted by CNN, so hopefully, it will be on CNN very soon.

It looks like the weather will  be warming over the next week. Sadly, many of the fish that are dead are breeding stock females. Those loses are not replaceable. This may have long lasting effects for generations to come.

For more information and current updates visit the folks at the Snook Foundation.

My daughter and I decided to brave the rain Thursday afternoon and try to catch a few fish.

As some of you may have read, I had a slight mishap with the boat trailer the last time we tried to go fishing. Well, I scored some replacement wheels that were just a little bigger than the ones I had. As you probably guessed, the wheels rubbed on the fender wells once we started down the road. I made a few modifications on the way. The kind of modifications I am speaking of involved a hammer and a pry bar, but it worked.

I have started feeling lucky when my kids want to spend time with their doddering old dad. Unfortunately, the weather and the fish didn’t cooperate very well. It poured rain almost the whole time we were out, but my daughter handled it like a trooper. We had some good strikes, but nothing got hooked up. After about an hour, another storm rolled in with some heavy lightening, so we loaded up and came home.

No fish pictures, but here are a couple of pictures of the storm.

We hit the lagoon this morning, early, but not early enough. We were all slow to get moving, so by the time the boat was in the water, we’d missed sunrise and were looking at 7 a.m.- pretty sad, considering we rolled out of bed at 5:30. Despite the late start, the view was beautiful, the sun coming over the treeline, the water glass calm.

Spent a lot of time chasing fish, had a lot of fish chasing us, but not many bites, unless you count the damage the puffer fish did. I’ll be surprised if I have any Exudes left with tails.

Tide was really low, so we got to see lots of wading birds and even had the treat of seeing a bobcat.

Put together a little video for your viewing pleasure; a mixture of fishing and…well…the Lagoon at its best.