I've been concentrating on redfish since snook are closed, and the snook action has slowed way down, anyway. The week started off pretty well, but as we got closer to the full moon, the action predictably slowed down.

The first trip of the week was with John Cahill, who recently bought a home in Cape Coral, but who has not completed the transition from Littleton, Colorado, just yet. I took his son Johnny, who was along on this trip, back in early July and had a great time. This was my first time to meet John.

The plan was to first catch ladyfish, and then use the ladyfish to catch redfish. The ladyfish are fun and challenging to catch. When you don't want them, they'll hit your lures or baits and never throw the hook. When you do want them, they're next to impossible to keep hooked. They're leapers extraodinaire, can be hard to hook and keep hooked when you actually want to catch them and get them into the boat. The are one of the nastiest fish you will ever bring into your boat. Probably because of the stress, they spray poop all over your boat, and they're profuse bleeders much of the time, as well. Talk about a mess in your boat. Of course, because they're flipping all over the boat, they splatter their mess on literally everything. But, hey, nothing is easy, right? Catching ladyfish for bait means I may not have to throw the castnet that day, and it certainly means catching fun for my party, and gives them a chance to kind of get warmed up. Often, the youngsters in the party will tell me they had more fun catching the ladyfish than they did the big reds or snook. And, often there are big trout, pompano, bluefish, jacks, and gafftop sail cats in the same waters.

Well, on this morning, John and Johnny actually did better at getting the ladies into the boat than they did the reds. They boated 7 of the 22 or so ladyfish they hooked. Certainly enough for a good day of redfishing! Once on the flats and dispensing chum, it didn't take long to get a good redfish bite going. The boys predictably had a tough time getting the hang of setting the hook on those big reds through the long, light lines, and missed more than they caught. They had 24 reds on, but boated only 6. We had a great time, but numbers like that leave me wondering what I can do to improve the hookup ratio. We finished the day with a great Waterfront lunch. That afternoon, I went to the tackle store and stocked up on Owner circle hooks, and bought some Fireline. I'd tried the braided superlines back when they first came out, and didn't like them, but I was fishing a bit differently then. Similarly, I used circle hooks many years ago on grouper with great success, but had never tried them on the flats. My party of four on Tuesday would be the perfect place to try them.

When I met Tom Terranova Jr., of New Jersey, and his dad Tom Sr., of Pembroke Pines, Florida, and their cousins Tuesday morning, I knew it was going to be a fun day regardless of how it went. I could just tell these guys were out to have a good time. I hoped that I could deliver the redfish action. We headed out to catch ladyfish, but the Terranova gang soon found that what I said earlier in this report is certainly true. I guess they must have hooked nearly 20 ladyfish, but we only managed to get 3 of the nasty critters into the boat. They also caught a couple of jacks, a couple of catfish, and a couple of nice trout while trying for the ladies.

We headed to the redfish grounds to try the Owner circle hooks. The thing about circle hooks is that you are not supposed to actually set the hook. You simply let the fish take the bait until the line is tight, pick up the rod and begin pumping and reeling. The Terranovas had no problem with waiting on the fish to pull the line tight, but things didn't go exactly as planned. Instead of lip hooking the reds as the hooks should have, most of them were gut hooked. The boys caught a dozen big reds, and a snook, and missed very few strikes. But, I lost 13 hooks that first day! Those Owner hooks cost nearly $5 for a bag of four or five hooks. That's very cost prohibitive compared to $7 for a box of 100 Mustad hooks. Perhaps we were letting the fish take the bait for too long. I decided to try them again on Thursday and allow less time before reeling. At any rate, we'd had a great time catching those reds, and everyone got several. I think the Terranovas really enjoyed the very visual skinny water fishing. We finished a perfect day at the Waterfront.

Thursday and Friday were scheduled to fish with my good friend John Hitt, president of University of Central Florida, in Orlando. John has rediscovered fishing in the last couple of years, and loves to fish. I love to fish with John for a host of reasons. He's funny, witty, and shares many interesting stories from his life experiences as president of several universities. I've yet to fish John under the right conditions to show him a big 20 to 40 redfish day, and hoped I could pull it off this time. We would chase them with ladyfish this time.

We headed out in the darkness of Thursday morning to the ladyfish hole. John loves to fish lures, as do I, so he was right at home with the TerrorEyez. We caught a dozen or more nice trout, at least half dozen jack crevalle, 4 catfish, and only 2 ladyfish. We kept one jack to go along with the two ladyfish for bait. You can catch a lot of redfish with one ladyfish once you've got them biting. We played with my remaining circle hooks, and John dug some from his tackle bag. We were patient, and gave them plenty of time but only caught four nice reds and a snook on the flat. The snook was the same one we had caught on Tuesday, and was easily identifiable by his torn right lip and my circle hook left at the back of his throat two days earlier. The fish also had a number of lesions on it. We wrapped the day at the Waterfront Restaurant.

Friday was basically a replay of Thursday. We did get five ladyfish, and had plenty of bait to chum with, along with four trout. But, the reds just wouldn't turn on for us, and five in the boat was all we could muster. Not fabulous redfishing, but John and I had fun playing with my Shimano Stella 2500, as well as John's Shimano Sustains that he has mounted to Redington rods. John and I both love nice fishing toys, and John agrees with me that it only takes a couple of good reds to make your day. John doesn't measure fishing success only by numbers of fish caught, but I still want to show him a big redfish day.

I guess I'm back to using the Mustad live bait hooks. Although the Owner circle hooks work well, they're just too expensive for daily guide use, and after a couple of days of messing around with it, I still don't like the braided lines. Guess I'll stick with Ande Envy Green!

Note: Those of you who have trips booked in the future, or who may want to book, should note my new phone numbers. Home/office is 239-628-3522, and the new cell phone number is 239-633-5851.