Issues 6-25-10
Today I had a great group of guys on the boat. This trip was put together by a long time friend of ours named Bryan. Bryan brought two of his clients . Shane and Lloyd. Both Shane and Lloyd are accomplished fisherman that travel the globe fishing so I was happy to have them on my boat.
This day started off as any other day would have. I was up at 0440 and ready to go by 0500. My party arrived on time and we were loading the boat up getting ready for what i was hoping would be a stellar day on the water.
We get to our first spot and the tide is ripping in and im thinking we may need to make a change and wait on the tide to slow down. Sure enough, as soon as I think that Shane gets SLAMMED and the fight is on.. Shane fights this fish for about 10 minutes and finally gets him up and it is a pig of a redfish. The fish measures 30” and is promptly tagged. This was Shanes first redfish and he was looking forward to Blackening this fish for dinner.
We tried for a few more minutes to see if anything else was going to happen, but i soon decided we needed to retreat to a slower tide area. I knew of a spot close that has been holding good numbers of trout, so off we went.
After a short 5 minute ride, we arrived at a small sand flat off a deep ship channel and instantly the fish were biting. We were fishing with Midcoast popping corks with shrimp under them and whacking them pretty good. Only one problem, the fish were barely bigger than the shrimp lol. We would occasionally get a solid fish hit and lost etc.
We kept catching small fish for the fun of it and then decided we had played with them enough and it was time to move. I jumped up on plane and was running along and then it HAPPENED.. That thing all boat captains dread… My beautiful suzuki motor was withering to a hault…. I knew this was not good, as I could feel her shaking as she ground down to a haul. After trying to restart her, I knew her time had come…
The guys also knew this and it was not even 9 am, so we discussed the options, I made a few phone calls to some other guides that were on the water and sketched out a plan. First off, we were on fish so we threw the trolling motor in the water and proceded to try and scratch out a few fish. We finally called the calvary (towboat us) after we had caught enough small fish and a few keepers for dinner.
The guys all were understanding and still had a good time. We had lots of good laughs, some at my account lol as I was depressed as the day wore on.. But it was still a fair day in my book.
Thanks guys, for a great trip. I hope to have you on the boat again once she is repaired.
Capt Thomas
