January is typically the slowest month of the year in the guide business. People don't seem to be thinking about fishing much right after Christmas, and we typically have our worst weather of the winter in January. We've also had an added obstacle, red tide organism blown into our area buy south winds feeding a front a couple of weeks ago. That made bait hard to catch and keep alive for a while, and littered the bottom with dead fish. In the past seven days we've had a couple of cold fronts come through, back to back, and we're colder than we've been in a long time. All my trips cancelled on the forecast of cold, windy, miserable days this week, and the only trip I did was with a couple of friends. Predictably, we put only one fish in the boat, an oversized redfish. We had lots of fun trying, though.

So, with lots of time to work on the website, and little to report this week, I'll use this report to tell everyone that I'm finally caught up on my web work. I have posted the long awaited 1998 Angler of the Year, and will soon post the award for 1999. I have also posted the Angler of the Month Awards for the months August through December. I've been so busy that I didn't even realize that I was so far behind. Boy, time sure flies when you're having fun.

So instead of reading my usual report this week, please take the opportunity to see if you or your friends were among those added to the Angler Awards.

The outlook for next week's weather is even more bleak. There probably won't be much fishing going on. We'll have to see what Mother Nature deals us.