I say yearly. But sometimes I take Mike and crew twice a year. Mike lives in Wisc. And travels back to the First Coast with family to see his folks. The funny thing about today's trip was that it was the 3rd attempt, in 2 years!
We've had sort of a bad streak of weather between us. I believe one time he had planned to go fishing aboard the Jettywolf, it was 40 knot winds. Then another it was raining with 25 knot winds....so ya get the drift.
Been taking Mike and his dad for years, now. So Mike and I converse. And he's the "MODEL" customer when it comes to reserving a day to fish. He sends me an email months in advance. We pick the day, he books his trip. We chit chat prior. And he's raring to go, when he arrives in Jax.
So all was set. 8:00am on the 18th. We depart. I have loads of frisky "free range" live shrimp, and the float-rig rods ready. The sky is dark in the morning, by no means is it warm and Florida like...."it was probably as cold in Appleton Wisc.??"
TROUT. I'm thinking, let's whack some limits. First spot. As I'm going over the how's and why's basically for Johns benefit, the float goes down. And there we go......I.G. -instantaneous gratification! I hand the rod over to Mike. And we have the first decent "boxer". 2 minutes into our day.
Mike, Gary, and John, start fishing and catch another decent boxer. But it's kinda slow going. Then, from out of no where we could see a long slick of fuel, come pouring around the boat and envelopes the entire area we were fishing. Yes, FUEL. The bites instantly, S-T-O-P!
Ya wanna talk embarrassment? Holy smokes! Yeah, this is all we needed! We couldn't see where it was actually coming from. Maybe a ship pumped it's bilges? Don't know, but I was a hair away from calling the coasties. But my number one concern was to catch fish. So we made a move.
I just attended a river fishing seminar last night, after fishing all day. And not to fault the speaker, maybe some live in a different world. But it was said, that the river is, "so clean". That maybe, comparitively. But we have construction along it's banks continuosly, ship yards, a Navy base, and plenty of foreign ships going in and out. I'll tell ya. This wasn't the first time I have seen something like this.
The sun never really shined on us. And obviously a "front" was coming through. It was freezin cold out in the middle of the river. So the majority of the day I tried to fish comfortable waters.
We tried a bit of bottom fishing. Nothing happened, so we went back to float-rigging. Catching, Specks and a Yellowmouth Trout. But it was a slow bite. And what fish we found, were caught. But it certainly wasn't a "rally" of fish, by no means. It was the weather, I'm sure.
Now the forecast for this weekend is gonna be warmer, sunnier, and "spring like"?? Saturday is the first day of spring. And the bright spot is that it's gonna feel like it, thank goodness. I'm sure I can speak for all my charter customers since late December......"IT'S ABOUT TIME!".
April is starting to book up. And this maybe the month we've all been waiting for, here in N.E. Florida.
But do not come down to the boat un-prepared. Today, I was in two fleece jackets, and fleece pants all day long. The water temp was up at 57 degrees. We didn't hit the Jetties, because of the wind and cold.
And out of the fish we caught only one Trout was a throw back. Which is a good sign.
