6/14/2007

I had the pleasure of fly fishing with Bill Madison and Robert Shook today. The conditions were drop dead perfect at first light this morning. The steam escaping from the refineries was going straight up and the tide was rising with it. Bill was after his first Red fish on the fly today. We took care of that situation within the 1st 20 minuets we were fishing!! Bill made a great cast to a nice 25 inch 5 lb. Red that was busting shrimp in about 8 inches of water, it doesn't get much better than that. Congratulations to Bill for a great first catch. By the way Bill had also tied the deer hair fly that he was fishing with and that makes it that much better. After the high fives and pictures Robert Shook took the front of the boat. We poled down the cut out onto a large flat and found a Red working shrimp on the edge of the grass line. Bob made a good cast and hooked the healthy young Red pictured above. It wasn't quite the Red Bill boated but it was a Red on the fly none the less. Bob was fishing a Mylar tubing epoxy fly with a rabbit fur tail. The tide started to slow and so did the bite but we still managed a few more rat Reds over the next few hours. We did find two 26 inch class Reds working together along a grass line pushing shrimp out of he submerged grass roots. Bill made another good cast but missed the hook set and we lost the pair. We moved on up north and boated another rat Red and 3 or 4 under sized Flounder on a conventional spoon and a spoon fly. I didn't photograph them but they were beautifully colored with dark olive colored bodies and white dapples scattered over the them. We were fishing a shell bottom and the flounder were camouflaged with this pattern.

A huge thunder storm is building to the South and I have one more spot to fish before the day's up. We took a vote and decided to give it a shot as long as the lightning wasn't showing. We hit the spot and Bob took the front to try to beat Bill's Red from earlier in the morning. Three cast later and he was hooked up with one that was the same size or maybe a little bit larger. The Red ran off several yards of line and we thought we had another fish but as Bob's luck would have it the epoxy fly came unpinned from the fishes mouth and flew back almost to the boat! Bob had a problem with keeping fish connected today even with a razor sharp hook?

The storm has really kicked into high gear with straight down lightning getting really close. We made it back to the boat ramp just in time to miss the hard rain but we really cut it close. If Bob had boated the fish I don't think we would have made it in time.

We had a great day and caught a good many fish even though they were mostly small.

Looks like Bessie Heights is finally on the road to recovery from hurricane Rita.

Tight lines, Mike