This was the last week in on my calendar with any time off the water until maybe June. I fished only on Friday. The rest of the week was spent working on 1998 taxes and working on the never ending job of search engine ranking. It was a week of poor tides, also. Whenever possible, I try to schedule off time on days with poor conditions, and fish the good ones.

My party for Friday was Danny Tosches, a fly fisherman and biology major from Vermont. The tide was a little better than it had been through the week, but would still be dead after the noon hour. It wasn't a strong morning tide, either. I'd talked with several guide friends the night before to try to get a rundown on the fishing and bait situation, and although bait was reported to be plentiful, most were reporting tough fishing for the last several days.

The weather boys were calling for a strong cold front to rumble through sometime Friday night or Saturday morning. I, and several other guides, were hoping this would be our ace in the hole. If the wind would swing around to the south and kick, the tide would be stronger and higher than scheduled, and the fish would open their mouths. If not, it would be slow.

It was beautiful when I met Dan Friday morning. It was calm and sunny. My plan, as I usually do with fly trips, was to catch bait as I normally would, and use it to determine if we had fish in a particular spot to catch, then to chum them with to try and incite a riot. I headed straight to where plenty of bait had been holding. I got maybe two dozen pieces on the first throw, and that was it, except for large threadfins. I couldn't imagine why the bait would have disappeared, but it did. Many throws produced nothing but empty nets.

I took a look a the causeway, but bait hadn't been very good there lately, anyway, and I wasn't into wasting a lot of time there. So, I headed north to a flat where bait was rumored to be. It took a few minutes, but we found plenty of beautiful bait, and were ready to go fishing after two throws of the net.

I went straight to one of my favorite snook spots, and knew when I arrived and found the water barely moving, the snook probably wouldn't eat. I was right. Nothing from a hole that always has plenty of snook in it. I hit a couple of other spots looking for trout or redfish with the same results. Damn! I didn't think it would be that tough!

At around ten o'clock, I headed for my favorite flats. I told Dan I was confident we'd catch fish there as long as the water got up enough. As I got closer, I could see another boat sitting on the flat. It turned out to be another guide boat with a fly fisherman aboard. We watched him blind casting as I poled the BarHopp'R in for a closer look. As I got closer I could see that it was a gray Action Craft, but couldn't make out who it was. He was poling around in exactly the spot I'd been catching so many fish. I poled on down the flat to another spot that had been holding fish. Dan finally got the first fish of the day, a nice snook with a shiner under a popping cork.

I kept watching the other boat waiting for him to pole off the flat. Finally, it appeared that he was indeed moving east, so I headed for the area. As I approached, I could see that he hadn't gone as far as I thought, so, I stopped at the most distant part of the flat that I figured would hold fish. From the first bait that went into the water we had fish on. It wasn't the wild, crazy action that I often am able to produce there, but it was a pretty good bite for the conditions, and considering that another boat had just been poling all over the area. Over the course of the next two hours Danny caught and released 5 big, beautiful trout going up to four pounds, and 10 or 11 nice snook. The odd thing was that the guide in the other boat, who's voice I was finally able to recognize after we started catching fish, never caught the first fish. And, regrettably, he seemed bitter and less considerate of us than I'd tried to be of him. I had been careful not to crowd him on the flat, but he was quite deliberate in crowding us after we were anchored and catching fish, at times almost on top of where we were throwing our baits. We caught fish, anyway. It was behavior very typical of someone with his reputation, which is that of being a guide who thinks he owns everything out there, and nobody else has any rights to his fish. His attitude has caused him the loss of respect from most of the guiding community. Unfortunate.

Anyway, we were able to pull out the day on that flat. Dan and I were both happy with the 16 or so snook and trout that we caught. As an aside, it was the first outing for the first Diawa reel that I'd bough in many years, now. I've tried them over the years, and I've worked on plenty of them for friends, but have never been happy with one. This is an Emblem X 2500 i-A. Sells for around $130. It has a much slower retrieve speed than the Shimanos I love so much, but is indeed a nice reel. It's glass smooth, yet doesn't have that hydraulic feel of the Shimano. It's just different, but very nice. I think over time I'll like it very much, but doubt that the Diawas would ever be able to win my heart away from the Shimano products that perform and hold up so well under the rigors of guide use.

Oddly, as we headed home Friday, there were still no signs of the front. The wind hadn't kicked or turned south. We had instead seen a seebreeze develop. But, the front rumbled through early Saturday morning without so much as a trace of rain here. Today, Saturday, it's blowing 25 to 30, and the temperature is falling off the roof. We have freeze warnings for the weekend. I'm afraid this last unexpected blast of cold winter air will really screw the fishing up for next week. I have a full week on the books. There should be plenty to report on. Tune in next week.