This week brought some interesting people to fish, and a reminder that redfish tend to be creatures of habit. First up was the father of the Gulf Coast Anglers Association, David Arcemant, of Texas. David's GCAA is about two years old, and he put a great web site up about 9 weeks ago. If you haven't yet seen it you can visit at http://www.gcaa.com, or click here to link to GCAA now.

David was here to fish with me in preparation to making me his first "Guide of the Month". I wanted it to be a good trip, of course. With hurricane Danny growing in the Gulf, our weather would be out of the normal summer pattern all week. Almost as if they knew, the beach snook bite was off, but we still managed to catch a few, plus some nice trout and snapper. But we found plenty of snook, along with a beautiful school of finning redfish around the bars in the Sound. Our count was 5 redfish to 26 inches, 6 trout to 20 inches, 6 snapper to 16 inches, and 18 snook.

The only low point was that I injured my back that morning while I was castnetting for bait. I don't even know exactly when I did it. All of a sudden, I could hardly move. But by noon, I could hardly stand the pain, and the weather was threatening, so we left the redfish biting. David is a great guy and fun to fish with, and I wish him well in his internet endeavor.

The following morning Dr. Ken Overturf joined me from Portland, Oregon. Ken is a genetic research scientist and avid fisherman. Like David, Ken had never caught a snook. Snook were slow again on the outside, but we did catch a couple, as well as 9 trout to 17", 4 snapper, and a jack. We finished up fishing the bars with a total snook count of 14 fish to 5 pounds. The redfish didn't show as they had the day before. I was sure they would. Maybe they were there and I just never spotted them. With my back hurting as it was, it was one of the longest days of my life.

By the next morning hurricane Danny was causing buffaloes to roam in the gulf, so beach fishing was out. My good friend and best customer Kevin Grover, President of ANSI in St. Petersburg, was down with Tom Murphy of Sarasota Memorial Hospital, and Fred of General Telephone. The barometer had dropped to nearly 29.80 overnight and I was afraid it was going to be a tough day. We managed 1 redfish and around a dozen snook around the bars on the west side, then went to see if we could find some reds on the east side of the sound. We didn't, and had to get in before the weather got nasty.

My last trip of the week was with Cook Bausman III, who is an international committee representative for the International Game Fish Association (IGFA), and owner of Fishing Hot Spots, which produces high quality charts, and The Direct Response Corp., which is a communications company. Again, I elected to fish the bars once they covered, because I figured snook would be a sure thing, and I felt confident that the school of reds would show up, too. I was right on both counts. The morning started off slow, as we waited on the tide to flood and cover the bars. As soon as they covered the snook moved in, and Cooke had caught 10 snook to 26" when I spotted the redfish finning near a bar about 50 yards away.

At this point we had very little air moving, and what breeze there was was variable. I asked Cooke if he wanted to chase the reds, and he quickly agreed. I maneuvered the boat into position on the Motorguide, but without the aid of a breeze, we couldn't get our small shiners to the fish. I quickly tied on a Johnson gold Silver Minnow, and Cooke hooked up on the first cast. I tied another rig, and we began catching reds two by two on practically every cast. We caught 15 beautiful reds before we elected to leave them biting so that I could give Cooke a taste of fishing reds in the mangroves.

We only had time to quickly hit two spots before the weather really started to brew and we were forced to head for the ramp. We just made it in under one hell of a storm. I may get to fish Cooke again next week.

It's great to see the reds showing up early. They're fun fish to catch; sort of like hooking on to a pit bull. They are creatures of habit. Once you find redfish on a flat on a certain stage of a tide, you are likely to find them there often. This week proved that.

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