January is typically the slowest month of the year for those of us in the professional guide business. It gives us a chance to catch up on other things, do a little fun fishing, and rest up before it goes crazy the first of February. January also typically offers up some of the poorest weather of the year, and there are a lot of days when we just can't fish. This was a typical January week.

Monday had been booked, but was forced to cancel, so it became a much needed maintenance day. My work van needed some TLC.

Tuesday, I had the first of several trips with Dr. Bob Rose, of Galveston, Texas. We drew a beautiful day with a light northwest breeze and the high forecasted to be around 80, but the day began with a heavy blanket of fog reducing the visibility to nearly zero.

I followed the causeway over to the second span in search of bait. We've had beautiful bait so far this winter, and it has been relatively easy to get. With Bob at the helm we made one throw at the north end of the second span that netted a bunch of threadfin herring. It's good bait, but hard to keep alive in quantities, and I wanted a load of shiners to go with them. A couple more throws produced nothing. My friend Capt. Maxie Stanford pulled up and offered that there was plenty of shiners at the other end of the span. We thanked him for the tip and headed that direction. Sure enough, there was bait flipping everywhere on the west side of the bridge. A couple of throws later we were off through the fog to our first stop. We couldn't see to navigate, so I just picked up the shoreline and followed it closely until we reached our destination.

We puttered around for the first few minutes, watching the water and looking for signs of redfish, trout, snook, or tarpon. There wasn't much going on visually, so I made an adjustment to the edge of the hole, and things began popping immediately. We were on big trout and redfish.

I think it's fair to say that Bob was amazed at the fishing; both size and quantity. I was surprised at Bob's reaction because the boys from Texas are always telling me how they'll drive right across schools of reds to get to the huge trout they have there, and I also knew that Bob had fished all over, including a lot of time in the Keys. Well, Bob quickly dispelled the myth of the big Texas trout. He informed me that those trout are only down in the very southern part of the state, and that for the rest of Texas he rarely sees a trout over two pounds. Well, all our trout were running 3 to 5 pounds, and the largest was 5.5 pounds.

Although Bob is a very skilled angler, he like everyone who first wets his teeth on this light line, long cast fishing, predictably had the same problem everyone does; getting completely tight on the line before striking. I think at one point he was a bit aggravated with himself, but in fact, he adapted more quickly than most. He did just great, and at the first stop boated easily 30+ speckled trout and a couple of nice redfish. Around noon, I suggested that we head to the Waterfront Restaurant for lunch. Bob quickly informed me that this was one of the best inshore fishing trips of his life, and it would have to be at gun-point if I was going to take him away from these fish. Well, I wasn't about to spoil his fun, so I grabbed a snack from the cooler and began getting the boat ready for the ride to our snook hole for the day. Meanwhile, Bob had switched to swimtail jigs and was still catching trout as fast as he could, albeit smaller fish than on the large livebaits.
Finally, I told Bob that it was time to head to our snook hole. I told him I expected the bite to begin at around two o'clock. I wanted to get there a little early and try to insure that I could get where I wanted to be, and have a little time to eat lunch. We started pitching baits at around quarter till, and at about ten till, snook hell started breaking loose. I missed by ten minutes. Once again, we were on big fish. This is fishing close to the mangroves, and even with 12 pound tackle and cat-like reflexes, it's nearly impossible to turn a fish larger than 9 or 10 pounds before it can cut you off in the roots. I think Bob was blown away at the sheer horsepower and cunning of these snook. He's a man of much experience with fish like big kings, but they are open water fish. This is a whole nuther ball game, as they say! But, Bob fared much better than most, in fact as well as the pros do, with big snook in the bushes. He landed 5 out of the 11 he had on. That's batting just under 500, and that's about as good as anyone can do short of fishing with real heavy gear. There's no challenge in that!

Once the bite was over, we headed for home. We had had a wonderful day. Bob was great company, and his enthusiasm was fun and contagious. He can't wait till next month when he brings his good fishing buddy, Fred Orkin down for a go at it. I just hope the God's will treat us as well in February. Bob has already written me a letter about his trip which you can view in the Testimonials Section, if you like.

I spent Wednesday at Smith Marine with Craig and Danny, laying out the rigging of BarHopp'R I, which is finally back from Waddington's Vintage Marine with a brand new top side. Much of the deck was covered with protective cardboard, so I can't really comment on the finished product from Charlie, just yet. What I could see looked good, though. Danny seemed optimistic that he'd be done with the rigging by Monday. With everything that is yet to be done, that seems like a stretch to me, but Tuesday or Wednesday would be fine. It's been so long, now, that I'm not about to rush the last stage of the project.

Thursday, my best bud Capt. Mark Bess of Skinnywater Charters, and I, went out for a day of no pressure, fun fishing. I'd had to leave BarHopp'R II at Boatmaster Trailers late the day before so they could take a look at the wheel bearing and repair a light on the Float-On trailer that came with her, so we took Mark's Skinnywater.

As we left Punta Rassa ramp that morning, we were in anticipation of a relaxing, trouble free day of great fishing, but Mother Nature threw us a curve. Once we got out to the causeway it didn't take long to realize that the front that had passed through the day before had brought with it the red tide organism. Our bait was dying as soon as we put it in the well. We were having a tough time even finding bait, and as soon as we did it was belly up. We headed out to the beach. There was no bait right up on the beach, but there was plenty of beautiful bait about half mile off shore. I made a beautiful haul of perfect shiners, and only seconds after putting it into Marks' two livewells, it was all dead. Damn!

We headed back inside, resolved to fish with artificials, and have fun in spite of the bait situation. As we neared the third span of the causeway, we saw birds working bait. The guide in us just couldn't pass up one more chance to make the bait thing work, so we stopped. Mark eased me up to where the birds were diving, and I made one throw. We hauled up a beautiful load of shiner, dropped them into both wells, and hauled butt as fast as we could go up the Sound, hoping that we could get into some better water. The plan sort of worked, as we managed to save three to four dozen baits. That was nothing short of a miracle because along the way, Mark realized that his baitwell had quit pumping, and snatched the boat out of gear to tend to it. Problem was, I was STANDING next to him with nothing in front of me for support, and I almost left the boat. I went down hard on the bow deck. Nothing seemed to be damaged then except my pride, but I could barely walk Friday and Saturday. Seems my left knee took a hell of a shot, and was quite swollen and sore. Anyway, Mark got the pump going and we were off to our snook hole. Oddly, when we got there, we thought we had lost all but maybe a dozen baits. But as time went on, many of the bait that were laying on the bottom of the well, miraculously found new life. We had enough bait to fish with.

We were at my snook hole on a falling tide, instead of the rising tide that I prefer, but things worked out OK. I had brought along a Shimano Sustain 6000 mated to a beautiful Penn tarpon rod, spooled with 20 pound test, and I was determined to get one of those monster snook out of this hole. Mark struck first blood, and landed a beautiful 9 pound snook. Shortly afterward, I had a brute of a snook literally explode the 20 pound line like it was sewing thread. Did you ever drop a fire cracker down a short piece of pipe when you were a kid. Remember what it did to the end of the pipe? Well, the end of my line looked like that....split and turned outward in all directions. Mark and I managed to bat 500 on the snook in that hole, landing 3 or 4 of the 7 or 8 that we hooked. The best was yet to come.

Once the water fell out of the hole and the bite quit, we headed to a great low water trout and redfish hole. In an effort to conserve some of our few live baits, we started off throwing jigs. Although we weren't catching the 4 and 5 pound trout that the live bait has been producing, we were catching nice trout up to 20 inches or so on nearly every cast. Once the trout had eaten all of our swimtail jig bodies and the tide had started moving back in, we switched to live bait, and began catching the big yellow mouth trout. We were having lots of fun. Not long before we were ready to call it a day, I caught the fish of the day.

I had pitched a large shiner near the edge of the hole. Not long after it hit the water, I saw it flash near the top, on it's side. I told Mark my bait was about to get eaten. I had no more than gotten the words out of my mouth when there was a tremendous blast on the bait at the surface. My line screamed as it sliced sideways through the water and came tight. I struck, and the big snook cleared the water and hauled butt for the shallows. The Daiwa Emblem 3000 drag screamed at the power and acceleration of the big snook as the 12 pound line sang a song on the breeze. In excitement Mark shouted, "It's a biggun, Butch! Get 'em!" I knew the fish was mine if all the knots held and the line didn't part; we were in open water. I took a few clicks off the drag as insurance. After several long runs, then some gallant boatside attempts to cut me off on the trolling motor, anchor line, and lower unit, she was mine. Mark grabbed her with the Boga-Grip and in she came. It was then we realized we didn't have a camera in the boat!

It had been a great, relaxing day of fishing with my best friend, capped off with a beautiful fish. What more could we ask for? We headed for home. I had to stop and pick up BarHopp'R II at Boatmaster, so we couldn't stay late, anyway. As usual, the folks at Boatmaster did a great job of taking care of me.

Friday, we had a pretty nasty front push through. Although it brought no rain, it beat us with lots of wind, cold temps, and a barometer that went to 30.54!! That's a skull crusher! I seriously doubt if anyone fished Friday or Saturday, and if they did, I'm sure they met with disappointment.

The forecast for next week is pretty good, though, and I think that by Monday it will be business as usual. It's been hard to believe that it's January in southwest Florida!