This was the week of my wife's second surgery. I took three days off to be home with her, and had one cancellation. The result was that I only fished two days, and they were tough.

Monday, my friend Bo Mack, the fella who dubbed me "Radio Schnaz", was back in town with his son Ed, and his good friend Bill Morriel and his son. Since the tide was very poor in the morning, the plan was to hit the water around nine o'clock, catch bait, have lunch at the Waterfront, and then fish the afternoon incoming tide. It was a good plan, but it didn't work very well. Oh, we got our bait at Picnic Island, and had a great lunch, but the wind was 15 knots straight out of the east, and I suspect was in part responsible for a horribly slow bite. I mean the fish just had a major case of lockjaw. OK, it's true that the boys missed a few hits that should have been fish in the boat, but the bite just wasn't there like I would want. The boys put one snook and two trout in the boat all afternoon. We worked hard at it, but the fish just wouldn't cooperate. I hate days like that.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were off days with Jean. Her surgery went well, but left her very sore. Tom and Sue Savage had been scheduled originally for Friday, and had booked last year. Unfortunately, something came up with his job that caused him to cancel at the last minute. That allowed me to move Geoff Jarvis and his friend of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, from Thursday to Friday. We were on the water at 6:30 AM. The wind was southwest at 15. We caught bait at Picnic and were off. I anticipated a pretty good bite, and actually, the snook and trout bite wasn't bad. Geoff and his friend got their first snook ever! Unfortunately, they missed a lot of hits, but did manage to land 3 snook. The boys also were really surprised at the size of the half dozen big trout they caught. They were the largest they'd seen at 5 pounds.

I took the Geoff and friend away from eating snook and trout to find them some redfish. I wanted them to get their West Coast Slam, and also to enjoy the mighty pulling power of our redfish. I took them to some of the best redfish waters in the Sound, on both the east and west sides, but to my disbelief, I couldn't get a redfish to eat.

But the boys had so much fun they decided they wanted to do it again. I didn't have any open days during the rest of their stay, so I arranged for them to fish with my friend Capt. Rey Rodriguez. We'll talk about how they did on that trip next week. It will be a full week for me, and there should be lots to talk about.

Thanks to all of my friends out there for your continued well wishes and prayers for Jean.