Have you ever tried to figure out why one type of bait catches more fish than another on any given day? Why one fisherman catches more fish than the other while using exactly the same bait when fishing on the same boat. Why are a bunch of fish found in one spot on one day then go back the next day and there are non to be found. These questions have perplexed fisherman for years. I bet you think I’m going to tell you the answers but I can’t. I can only ponder different theories and there are a lot of them. Some of them can sound like good logical excuses to fellow fishermen and even better to the person who doesn’t fish. But as fishermen we all know that sometimes no matter what you think you know and what you try you are just not going to catch fish on that given day.
Take, for example, this past weekend. I went out on Saturday morning at the break of dawn to fish the last couple of hours of the out going tide. Not getting anything on my fly rod I put it away and picked up my spinning rod and had no luck with it either, just a couple of very small trout. I then ran into some friends of mine who were using live shrimp and having no luck either. We parted ways and I was headed back to the boat ramp. On my way back I decided to stop in a canal to give it one last shot before I called it a day. By this time the tide had started coming in and the wind picked up. I was sort of out of the wind in the canal so I picked up the fly rod again. On my third cast I had a nice 16” trout. By the time I was done drifting down that canal I had five trout between 15 ½ and 19 inches. Then all of a sudden it was like someone threw a light switch and the fishing turned off.
On Sunday I headed back to that same canal and the fishing was hot, at least for me it was. Another fellow was fishing there and he had 3 trout using lures. I was using my fly rod and caught 15 trout a redfish and a couple of jacks, one of which bit off my fly. Who knows why my fly caught more fish than the other guys offering, I’m just glad it did. By the way, once the sun came out from behind the clouds the fishing turned off. And yet another good excuse of why the fish stopped biting.
Monday, October 03, 2011
Like most fishermen I have a lot of stories to tell about my experiences on the water or on the road traveling to or from a fishing destination; some good, some funny and some are not so good or funny. I have two stories to relate to about this weekends fishing tournament I was involved with in St Augustine. I have been involved with this tournament for the past nine years and it is all done to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
The first story is a little “batty”. On Saturday morning I was driving up A1A at 4:30 AM to launch at the boat ramp at the St. Augustine lighthouse. I was somewhere just north of Matansas Inlet when something flew from out of nowhere into the path of my vehicle. I forgot about it by the time I got to the boat ramp. The next morning when I went out to clean the boat I noticed something in the front grill of my truck. When I went to inspect what it was I found a dead Bat that was in perfect condition, except for the dead part. I told my wife to come check out what I had caught yesterday. We removed it from the grill and snapped a few pics and sent them out on the Internet to some of my fishing buddies. I got some interesting responses back. As for the wife, she thought it was one of my most interesting catches ever.
The next story involves 2 anglers, one from Oklahoma the other from Massachusetts. Not being avid fishermen I spent the better part of the first morning trying to teach them to cast a spinning rod. One took to it pretty good the other not so good. As luck would have it (call it beginners luck) the not too good caster caught most of the fish over the two days. Fishing was difficult because of the extremely high water we were having. They caught a couple of small trout in the ICW but they were undersized. We then moved to the back of the flats to work the grass line for some reds. Not so good caster wound up landing a 22” red on a Berkley Gulp jerk shad rigged on a 1/8 oz 5/0 worm hook. Later that day we were in the 206 flats and the not so good caster hooked into a big redfish using the same rig he landed the other red on. He couldn’t budge the fish but once it started to move it took off like a “bat” out of @#$%. The fish stopped and ran straight back to the boat dragging his line across the trolling motor and breaking him off. He now has a fish story of his own to tell about “the big one that got away”.
The first story is a little “batty”. On Saturday morning I was driving up A1A at 4:30 AM to launch at the boat ramp at the St. Augustine lighthouse. I was somewhere just north of Matansas Inlet when something flew from out of nowhere into the path of my vehicle. I forgot about it by the time I got to the boat ramp. The next morning when I went out to clean the boat I noticed something in the front grill of my truck. When I went to inspect what it was I found a dead Bat that was in perfect condition, except for the dead part. I told my wife to come check out what I had caught yesterday. We removed it from the grill and snapped a few pics and sent them out on the Internet to some of my fishing buddies. I got some interesting responses back. As for the wife, she thought it was one of my most interesting catches ever.
The next story involves 2 anglers, one from Oklahoma the other from Massachusetts. Not being avid fishermen I spent the better part of the first morning trying to teach them to cast a spinning rod. One took to it pretty good the other not so good. As luck would have it (call it beginners luck) the not too good caster caught most of the fish over the two days. Fishing was difficult because of the extremely high water we were having. They caught a couple of small trout in the ICW but they were undersized. We then moved to the back of the flats to work the grass line for some reds. Not so good caster wound up landing a 22” red on a Berkley Gulp jerk shad rigged on a 1/8 oz 5/0 worm hook. Later that day we were in the 206 flats and the not so good caster hooked into a big redfish using the same rig he landed the other red on. He couldn’t budge the fish but once it started to move it took off like a “bat” out of @#$%. The fish stopped and ran straight back to the boat dragging his line across the trolling motor and breaking him off. He now has a fish story of his own to tell about “the big one that got away”.
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