Thursday, January 24, 2008

1/24 - Obvious as all hell

Had a quick decision trip with Ernie Taylor today. We decided to head out this morning at 8am.

Tuesday I went out and it was a glorious day. Wednesday I couldn't go. But on Tuesday Ernie couldn't go, but could on Wednesday, so we went today.....Thursday.

Being it's still a full moon tide, we didn't leave out till 10:30am. And man was it nice. We headed to the jetties to try out a new rig I've been working on, to replace snaggy and expensive jig heads, that I normally would cast up to the jetty rocks.

Personally, I don't have much problem fishing a jig deep in the jetty rocks. Probably because I was one of the originators of the technique and have been doing it for a long, long time. But I'm always thinking about my customers, wanting it to be easier for them, while saving me the cost of so many jigs.

So Ernie and I went an anchored up along one of my normal spots along the rocks. I had two different rigs set up, with basically the same concept I came up with.
Ernie snagged the jetties a few times, but it was his hook that he'd loose and that was it. I on the other hand kinda snagged a few times, always got my rig free, but never lost a single rig.

Okay, so what was the out come of the development of a new rig? I don't know!
But one thing was for sure, the weight part of the rig was never lost. Will it work? Yes, it did.
Now did we catch any fish?
NO.....but we only "jigged" one spot, waiting on the falling tide. And when we saw a boat up in the river go "stern east", we left out to follow the exact same pattern I worked on Tuesday.

Oh and by the way. It was warm, hardly any wind, and slick seas at the jetties at 11:00 am today. Absolutely gorgeous! The water temp on the other hand, is a cool 55 degrees on the surface, on my machine. And since all the true wintery cold nights and days really started. The jetties for me have been quite dead overall.

We caught some Trout instantly on the next spot. But it's a tough spot to fish on the full moon falling tide. So it was in and out, with 4 Trout in a matter of just a few minutes. They're there, big time. But the tide doesn't give me much time to fish the area.

Then here came the wind, and I was still on track to follow Tuesday's pattern. And this is when things started to fall apart. The sky darkened, the wind picked up, and it was obvious as hell, here comes the FRONT! One Flounder and a few Trout later, it was time to move on. The N.W. winds are not too kind on this spot if you're a Float Fisherman.

By the time we left and anchored up on another close spot, it was evident our beautiful morning weather was over. But we kinda knew this going in....all the forecasts said late afternoon it would be all over us. The air temp plummeted, and at our last 2 spots we tried anchoring which was a chore in the 20 knot winds, and then came the rain.

So we packed it in.

Didn't take any photos today. I think ya'll know what a 17" Trout looks like by now.

I'm looking forward to Monday and Tuesday which are the next trips that I have reserved.
The weather's "supposed to be" great, and the temp in the 70's.