This week must have been an early Christmas present from God for us guides. It was a week of beautiful weather, great fishing, and for me, great people. What a week!

Bob McGuire, of Line Lexington, Pennsylvania, was first up on Monday. Bob is a super guy, and a previous customer whom both Capt. Mark and I have fished. We've both had a great time with Bob in the past. Bob has been with lots of guides around the state, and paid me the highest of compliments. He sure made my day.

We headed right to St. James Creek in search of bait. On the first two throws, I netted only ten or so shiners. On the third throw, I threw as far as I could down the chum line, and loaded up. I threw once more just to see if we could hand pick some bigger baits. We were off!

We went to a snook hole on the dead low just before the tide started in. Although the action wasn't crazy, Bob did boat several snook, a couple of ladyfish, and a jack. When the action slowed in spite of the good moving water, we headed to the second stop of the day. We found more snook action, and trout action, too. Once that action slowed, we headed to redfish country and fortunately were able to boat around 15 redfish up to 6 pounds. Along with the 15 or so snook, and 15 or so trout to 4 pounds, we had produced a day of around 50 fish.

There was only one way to end such a great day, and that was at the Waterfront Restaurant. We had a great lunch and time to talk, and I heard Bob use the "A" word more than once. No not that "A" word, "the Awesome" word. That surely made my day all over again. Thanks, Bob.

Tuesday was a great day with my bud, Capt. Mark Bess. We took several of Mark's black powder 50 caliber rifles and my Ruger P-85 out for a day of shooting and sighting. This was the first time I'd ever been around black powder rifles, and they are really cool. When that 50 cal. lead ball hits the sand backstop it looks like someone lobbed a hand grenade. The gun itself, doesn't kick like you'd expect, but rather kind of gives you a good push back. It was also fun to run some rounds through my pistol, which I hadn't fired at anyone in quite a while! Just joking! Later in the day I went to check on the progress of BarHopp'R I at Waddington's Vintage Marine. I'm really hopeful that she will be done before Christmas, now.

Wednesday morning started out with bait tough to find for Bob and Bonnie Elliott, who were down from Punta Gorda to fish. Bob and Bonnie are in the real estate business there, and are the folks to call if you're thinking about the area. They're super folks.

We went through a lot of chum, and tried several spots near St. James Creek without seeing the first shiner. I was not a happy camper, because this was already eating into the first of the incoming tide I wanted to fish for snook. I finally headed out to the beach, thinking that would be the quickest and surest bet for getting bait, and it panned out. The bait wasn't big, but good enough to fish with.

I just received a wonderfully detailed email from Bob, with his account of the trip. He should have been a writer. Instead of putting a lot of details here, I'll just say that we boated 25 to 30 snook, 15 to 20 speckled trout, a ladyfish, 2 jacks, and only one redfish. You can check out Bob's fishing report in the testimonials section, then come back here for the rest of this report. Because the snook were so prolific in one of the spots, Bob used several different artificial lures to catch them with pretty good success. He was using his Daiwa baitcaster, which he left in the boat at the end of the day. Of course, we finished the day at the Waterfront, again, and Bob and Bonnie were pleasantly surprised at how great it was after not having been there in some 20 years.

The perfect week continued right on in to Thursday with John Bruning, and his brother Chuck, both from the Chicago area. At this point, we'd had a very small front pass with very little weather impact, except that it sent the barometer to over 30.20. I went straight for the beach to get bait, not wanting to waste too much time in the process. Once we were baited up, I headed to a pothole up in the Sound looking to catch some ladyfish, which we would later use for redfish bait. Along the way, I decided to stop to see if there were any tailing redfish in one of my favorite spots. There were tails popping up all over the place! We bailed out of the boat with pockets full of shrimp, extra hooks, leaders, and shrimp Texas rigged and ready.

Boy, were those redfish skittish. I couldn't believe how spooky they were. As soon as we got close, the disappeared. Oh, the fish were still there, but not tailing. I can't tell you how many we saw swimming, and several swam right within feet of me. Chuck did catch the only tailer out of the spot, and was thrilled with it. It's a really cool way to catch fish. Finally we headed to a nearby area where we could catch some ladyfish and have a shot at some more tailers. John, went on foot in search of more reds, while Chuck and I stayed in the boat fishing for ladies. Although John didn't score a tailer, Chuck did score several nice ladyfish, which stayed with us for bait.

From there we headed to several snook holes, where we had lots of action. We also had some trout and jack action. Our last stop before lunch was for redfish, where we did score a couple of nice reds. So, for the morning we caught 25 or more snook, 3 redfish, 6 trout, 3 ladyfish, and 2 jacks. It was a great day of fishing, and John and Chuck were a blast. I'm looking forward to seeing them again.

Friday morning I met my friend Kevin Haag at the Waterfront Restaurant. I'm glad we meet at the Waterfront, as Kev is usually a little late, and it gives me a place to sit and have coffee. Kevin is the very successful owner of Douglas Realty in Cape Coral. If you're interested in property in the Cape, Kevie is the man to call. Kevin brought his best friend, Rick Knight, of the last seventeen years, for his first BarHopp'N trip. It was to be specifically a tail chasing day.

I had lost both my livewell pumps the day before, along with breaking my digger anchor. I had a spare anchor, but it was after dark before I got home, and there was no time to repair the pumps. It really didn't matter since we would be using shrimp and cut ladyfish for bait. I always try to make my trips with Kevin instructional, so that he can go out on his own and use what he's learned from me. I wanted to do the same today, but it would be a little different because we would be operating in such shallow water. I knew Kev couldn't get into the shallows like I do, so I wanted to show him places he could fish for tailers from his boat. Rick also had a nice flats boat, a 20 ft. Backcountry, but I quickly blew his mind with the shallow running abilities of the BarHopp'R. He was pretty blown away that I could run over water where the grass was sticking up, and not even stir up the mud or cut the grass.

I went first to where the Brunings and I had found all the tailers Thursday. Someone must have seen me, as there was a boat anchored up there, with several anglers out on foot. We stopped to take a look, but seeing no tails, I figured the anglers had already spooked the fish.

I went a little further north to an area where I figured Kevin could park and wade in if he couldn't get his boat across the shallows. I showed him how to go in and land in a very large pothole. Well, as it turned out, there were no redfish tailing in the perfect tailing water, but there were quite a few reds in the hole where we were sitting. We fished for them as we watched intently for tails, and caught several beautiful redfish, but saw none tailing in the shallows.

From there, I took them on a real shallow water expo to points north. Kevin and Rick were even more amazed at the shallow waters I was able to travail. I really wanted to find some tailers, so I went to an area I knew they couldn't possibly get to in anything less that a boat like mine, or an airboat. I was shocked that we again found no tailers, but pleasantly surprised when Rick found a small area of huge scallops literally littering the shallow landscape. We didn't know if they were in season or not, so we left them laying. We could have filled buckets with them in no time. We couldn't have found them on purpose if we'd wanted to!

When that didn't pan out, I decided to try the west side of the Sound. Surely there would be some fish tailing somewhere! When I first set the BarHopp'R down in the shallows there, she was rubbing bottom. I could barely pole her. My plan was to pole my way to a far away pothole that almost always has reds in it on a super low tide. I hoped to find tailers along the way. Well, once again we were disappointed to find no tailing reds anywhere on this expansive flat, but the pothole was the charm. We pushed a few reds as soon as we reached the edge of the hole, and I knew we'd be in business! I anchored, and put out some chum. We put some chunked ladyfish out for bait along with shrimp on one rig, and it wasn't long before we had the first 11 pound red in the boat. In the hour that followed we caught several big redfish, and easily had our three keepers. As an aside, I saw a huge tarpon free jump twice in succession not 200 yards from us in the deep water.

It had been a beautiful and productive day. Hopefully, Kevin and Rick went home with some new things to think about. We went ahead and finished the day at the Waterfront. We were all starved. That wading around on the flats burns lots of energy.

What next week brings will largely depend on the weather. We have a week of pretty poor tides, and I have a fairly busy week. I just hope this warm weather will stay with us for a while longer.