This was the first week in several weeks that wasn't interrupted by bad weather. I just heard this morning, though, that there is another tropical storm brewing in the southwestern Caribbean, so who knows what next week will bring. It was a week of less than favorable tides, and I had a couple of days scheduled off because of that.

My Monday trip was with Chris, Jim, and Rick Caldwell, three of five brothers from Orlando, Florida. We had been forced to cancel a previous trip on August 18, when the boys' grandmother passed away. Chris, especially, was wired about this trip. I was really looking forward to it, and hoping I could put them on some fish that would eat. We had a dead low tide at ten o'clock that morning, so I decided we'd meet then and fish until around four.

The unknown would be bait. I just wasn't sure how bait would be starting late. We arrived at Fosters Point at ten thirty to find there was plenty of beautiful bait. I was relieved at that. It wasn't long before we had plenty of everything we wanted, and were off to the first spot of the day. It wasn't long after settling in at the first hole that we had lots of action, lots of laughs, and lots of broken lines and pulled hooks going on. We had the redfish going pretty good. We were getting plenty of hits. In fact, we had exactly 25 redfish on our lines that morning. Early on we lost probably 7 or 8 to break-offs. I was puzzled and annoyed. I had changed some of the eight pound lines over the weekend because they were so beaten up from the nearly 30 reds Norm Willoughby had caught on Friday. I eventually stripped all the way to the bottom of a couple of the spools trying to find good line, and finally decided that I must have had a run of bad line. The lines I changed over the weekend were from the very bottom of the spool. The normally superb Ande line had the strength of about 2 pound test right off the bottom of the spool. I was carrying one spare spool, and six rigs in all, so we were OK, but that was very frustrating. Chris, Jim, and Rick took it all in stride, though, and outright missed another eight or nine fish. We counted 17 getaways in all. Rick caught two catfish, for which he took a verbal beating from his brothers. The boys did boat 6 big redfish up to 12 pounds, and later got 2 snook at a different spot.

We finished the day with a late lunch at the Waterfront. We had a good time reliving the day's experiences fish, by fish, and as expected, the Caldwells all raved about the great food. The guys all agreed they'd learned a lot, too. It was a great day with great company and we had a lot of fun, even though we were plagued with line problems early on.

Tuesday, Ron Beck, one of my favorite customers, was over from Dania with his buddies Joey and Nelson. I was happy just to see Ron, as he had been in a very bad accident a couple of months earlier, and was lucky to still be with us. As on Monday, we had elected to fish the tide, and got started around eleven o'clock. I knew as soon as I met Joey and Nelson, they like Ron, were a couple of real characters, and would be a lot of fun.

Bait was a little slower coming at Fosters Point, but we got plenty and were soon off to the first stop of the day. Overnight I had refilled some of the reels with line from a new spool, and was confident I had the line problems under control. All we needed was a good bite. But, we lost most of our breeze, and the temperature hit 90 just like a summer day. I think that and the later tide served to put a damper on the reds' appetites. As hard as I worked on them, they just never went into a good, hard feed. Ron and company had a dozen or so on the ends of their lines, and I'm guessing they landed half of them.

By around four o'clock we all decided we'd had enough of the heat, and it was time for the Waterfront. I don't know why, but I'd never taken Ron, so it was the first time for all. During the great lunch I learned that Joey and Nels are involved with a very big website that is coming soon. It will be a site that allows you to do virtual investing in top companies without spending a dime before you buy. Sounds cool. The guys all agreed that the food was a good as it gets. Ron and I agreed that although the late start was nice, in retrospect, we probably should have fished the less than desirable early outgoing tide. There's no question I like to be on the water early when there's fishing involved! But, what the hey, we had a good time, and the boys took home a limit of redfish.

After a couple of days off I was back at it on Friday with Bruce Boardman and his lovely wife of thirty-seven years, Joanne. The Boardmans, haling from Grosse Point, Michigan, have a vacation home in Bonita Springs and visit often. They also have a 15' Whaler jet boat that they fish from. They have a problem in real shallow water with clogging the intake, and don't have a live well sufficient for keeping shiners, and I suspect there may be a new boat in their future.

I had warned Bruce that we would be fishing a falling tide all morning, and that the fish would likely not want to eat, but he was willing to take whatever Mother Nature threw our way. So, we were off to Fosters at 6:30 AM. There was plenty of bait, but it was noticeably smaller than what I've been catching. We didn't have many baits over 4 inches. Understand, the fish don't care about the size of the bait, but that the larger baits are much easier to cast a long distance from the boat, especially if you have no breeze to help you with the casting..

By the time we got to the first hole of the morning, the tide was racing off the flats. I worked hard to get something going, and knew I was on fish, but they were stubborn. Bruce managed to boat the only one that struck his bait there. I knew from experience that as the water left that flat, so to would the fish. We moved to an area where I usually have great success on low, incoming tides. I was forced to stop a long way off because there was another guide poling across the area I wanted to fish, but didn't appear to be fishing. That wasn't a problem, because as I was poling toward my final destination, I had poled up on redfish everywhere.

Perhaps the highlight of the day for the Boardmans was a pod of redfish tailing in about a foot of water. There were perhaps a dozen big reds tailing in what appeared to be a small pothole, and they were grouped up very tightly. They were on something in that pothole, but I'll never know what. They were happy fish; splishing and splashing and having fun, and they were impervious to anything around them. We tried our best to get a shiner to them from a safe distance, but by that time we'd lost what breeze we'd had, and just couldn't do it. I tied a 1/2 oz. Johnson silver minnow on an 8 pound rig, knowing Bruce would be able to get the distance he needed with that. Bruce took shot after shot with that spoon, but his elevated adrenaline level had his sights fogged up. He wasn't getting the bait to the fish. Finally, he made the perfect cast and pulled the spoon through the fish. A big red peeled off and followed for a second, then hammered the spoon. As is often the case with folks inexperienced at sight fishing, Bruce reacted to what he saw instead of what he felt, and missed the fish. But it was great excitement. It was enough to blow the fish out.

We continued to pole along and cast until I finally reached the area I had wanted to fish with livebait. The other guide had cranked his big motor and roared away earlier, which I hate to see anyone do, but I figured the fish would be settled back down. And, they were. I saw redfish after redfish from the platform of BarHopp'R II. I anchored and chummed, moved and anchored and chummed some more. They just wouldn't eat. Finally, as we were about to call it a day, Bruce was hammered by a nice redfish that apparently had a hollow fin, and boated a nearly 28 inch beauty. She had to go back.

It was the perfect way to end the day, so we headed to the Waterfront for lunch. Bruce had only missed one of his three strikes, and finished the day batting a .666. That's much better than average. Over a world class lunch the Boardmans told me that what surprised them most was how shallow we were fishing, and how many fish there were in that shallow water. I suspect that what they learned on this day might influence the way they fish in the future. And, like I said, Bruce was talking about a new boat on the way home!!

And there you have it. Folks, there are redfish everywhere, on every tide. No matter how you chose to go after them, you should at least have plenty of opportunities. We can't always make them eat, but the excitement of seeing those fish, and being out there with them makes for a great time on the water.