I had the pleasure of guiding Bill Heugel and Don McMurry today on their 1st trip to Bessie Heights Marsh. The weather man said bad weather was coming but we thought we could beat the weather and get a days fishing in before it happened. Well we did beat most of the weather but we had to run from a thunder storm around noon but went back out after it passed.

Don got the first Red in the boat shortly after sunrise, it was a Rat Red but a Red none the less.The activity was extremely slow with no real feeding going on except for the small lady fish and small specks. We moved around and Bill caught a small Lady fish so we moved to another area of the marsh. Around 10:00am Bill hooked up with this nice 23 & 3/4 inch Red that weighed 5 lb. on the Boga grip. The Red ate a Capt. Scott Sparrows"mothers day fly". It's a shrimp style pattern. Shortly after Don hooked up with another Rat Red. After releasing the fish we saw a huge thunder storm heading our way so we beat it back to the boat ramp and waited for it to pass. After a short wait we hit the flats again with the weather deteriorating rapidly. Don hooked up with a small black drum on a similar pattern as Bills. The thunder and lightning is heading our way and the rain in coming down hard so we call it a day at 2:30pm.

Bill and Don are great fly casters and practice catch and release.They were a joy to fish even in the less that favorable conditions. My hat's off to them for hanging tuff.

Tight lines, Mike