Long time readers of this report will observe that the number of days I’m fishing is down quite a bit from years past. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to be out more. It’s the austerity program. It’s about a $20 round trip to the coast just in fuel. There hasn’t been much money coming in. I have been running in the woods, working out, gardening, and those types of close to home activities. I’ve been out enough that I pulled two ticks out of my hide this week. I HATE TICKS! I never get ticks when I’m out in the boat.

There were a couple of picture perfect days this past week, but I didn’t fish them. The one day I got out on the boat was Tuesday, with young Dr. Chester Zarnoch. Chester’s a Ph.D., an ecology professor at City University of New York.

A front came through Tuesday morning with heavy rain and lightning, so we didn’t get out until a little after 10 AM. We had a solid, chill wind of 15+ out of the northwest, and a deck of clouds that eventually broke up and disappeared. But even after the sun came out the conditions were less than ideal.

We launched at Haulover Canal and idled onto the Mosquito Lagoon. Chester quickly got his first two redfish ever, on a Riptide weedless jig. They are running small this winter, I must say! He also got a couple of trout on a DOA Shrimp. Then he wanted to fly fish. You gotta love fly fishing when the lagoon is covered with whitecaps! We got against the west bank of the lagoon and poled for miles. We saw reasonable numbers of fish, but many of them saw us first. Chester had a few good shots and had some casts I thought should have worked. But nothing did. We fished until close to sunset without getting another bite.

Would we have done better by spin fishing? Possibly. Would bait have worked? Quite likely. But guiding is a service business, and my angler wanted to fly fish. So we do so to the best of our ability.

I’ve gotten a few emails about the shad run. I haven’t fished it much and have had no success when I have. Tom Van Horn was out one day this week and got exactly one shad, so I would venture a guess that it’s not a great run so far.

I have a trip booked on Tuesday, and am attending the Crappiemasters tournament on Lake Monroe on Thursday, so don’t touch that dial!

Upcoming Events:
MINWR Show and Tell, February 27, $50 per person.