We had a lot of weather problems again this week. We're still in a reverse weather pattern with storms coming onshore from the west in the morning, instead of from the east in the late afternoon.

First up this week were Tom Galuszka, and his beautiful fiancee, Janice (pronounced Jan-eece), from Island Lake, Illinios. Tom and Janice were fun to fish with because he loves to fish, and she is eager to learn. We headed north through the darkness to get bait. I decided to stop at Chino Island and take a look. Not long after I put the hook down, we were attacked by a mob of mosquitoes like I hadn't seen in years. I tried to hang in long enough to get bait, but I could see the bugs were eating Janice even worse than they were biting Tom and me. We took off for Foster's Point.

It had been a while since I'd been able to get out to the Stickbeach, so after gathering bait we headed out to check it out. Much to my surprise, we couldn't even raise a snook bite out there. I don't know what's up with that. There also wasn't a fish to be found in some of my favorite places on the inside of the Sound. I wound up at a spot at Regla Island, which gave up some fish. In fact, we got all our fish right there. Tom and Janice boated 5 redfish and lost another 6, along with 2 snook, and a couple of catfish. It was a tough day of fishing, but we had fun.

We, of course, finished up the day at the Waterfront. Janice and I had a good laugh there. Janice is a beautiful, petite girl with a Chinese mother, and a Filipino father. She speaks Tagalog fluently. My wife is Filipino from Hawaii. I've managed to learn a few critically important words over the years. Janice used a word that sounded like a Filipino word for a private part of the anatomy. When I asked her if she said "*@&!", she broke up, and we had a good laugh while Tom wondered what was so funny. I'm sure Janice has since explained it to him. Tom and Janice were lots of fun, and I hope to see them every year.

Back home Monday afternoon, I checked my website. It was nowhere to be found on the net, which meant the Internic had finally approved my ISP change. I was now without email or website. I immediately got on the phone with Mindspring. To this point I'd already made many, many calls and wasted a lot of my time trying to get information enough out of these guys to make my end work when the time came. Well, I spent nearly 6 hours on the phone with Mindspring people, going from one to another. It was a trying evening, but finally late, we had everything working and I was able to start uploading to their server. Then a real ugly problem reared it's head. I couldn't find half my pages on Mindspring with my browser. I was informed after some argument that Mindspring's servers are case sensitive. My previous servers had not been. This meant I would have to go through every page on my site and make sure all links and filenames were the same case before my website would work. I was in a panic. That could take days of time that I don't have.

I called my party for Tuesday. Tim Krause is my mechanic, and I've known him for years. He's one of the most happy-go-lucky people you'll ever meet. I had taken Tim and his wife Cindy on a honeymoon trip the day after they were married several years ago. To make a long story short, we ran into terrible weather and spent about 6 hours hiding at Keesel's shack. We actually had a lot of fun, but we didn't get to fish. I promised Tim and Cindy another trip someday, and Tuesday was to be the day. I knew Tim would understand, and I also knew we had a forecast of a rainy day with morning showers. Tim was nice enough to let me off the hook so I could work on getting my site up, and ironically, it did rain on the Sound for a good part of the morning. Actually, it worked out well for us all. The trip would have probably been another rainout!

Wednesday, my friend David Bernot, of Union, New Jersey, and his son Chris were up for the first of two trips during this visit. David is one of my favorite customers. He's easy going, and lots of fun. We always have a good time.

After getting bait at Foster's, we headed to a hole off a mangrove island I hadn't fished since spring. The wind and tide were right, and I though we might find some snook home there. Well, we found snook there, but we also found redfish in the hole. Actually, we caught most of our fish for the morning right there. David and Chris missed quite a few hits, which is to be expected, but still managed to boat 5 redfish, 6 snook, a catfish, and a speckled trout for the Slam. We hit a few other spots with no results. That was the hole of the day. We capped off a perfect day with a great lunch at the Waterfront. The boys kept a couple of redfish for dinner.

Paul Fine, of Bloomington, Illinois, was looking to catch some fish on Thursday. Mother Nature had other ideas, though. We did manage to catch plenty of bait, and got to the first hole in time to catch 1 snook and a couple of trout before the weather forced us to run to Keesel's shack for cover. We stayed there watching the bands of storms move in off the gulf for an hour or more. When there was a break in the rain, I ran us to the Waterfront for some more secure cover. I could see some bad looking stuff coming, and there was plenty of lightning in it, so I thought inside would be better than outside. We decided to toss in the towel at around ten o'clock when there was another break in the weather, and headed back to the ramp while the getting was good! I hope I'll get to fish with Paul again. He was a very interesting fellow, and quite nice.

It appeared that the weather would allow Charles Ruston to make his second trip with me, this time bringing his brother Don, who lives in Lehigh Acres. Don is pretty much a bass guy, and I really wanted to put him on some hard pulling reds and snook.

After getting plenty of bait at Foster's, I decided to try fishing some deeper water. I was thinking that the deeper water would be cooler than that on the shallow flats, and that there just might be some fish relaxing there. I headed for a creek that I normally fish only in the winter. We started off with the 8 pound gear. It wasn't long before Don hooked a monster of a fish. He had a hell of a battle with it, and I thought he was going to win, but it wound up running under the boat and touching the line on the hull. She got away. I knew it was a big redfish, although I hadn't seen the fish.

It wasn't long before we had another on. We saw that fish, but Charles lost it near the boat. We were on reds, all right! I switched the boys to the 7.5 ft. St. Croix rods with Daiwa Emblem X 3000 reels spooled with Ande Envy Green 12 pound test. I figured that would give them a better chance of turning those big reds in the close quarters of the narrow creek. It did! Although we lost 6 of the big reds, Charles and Don also boated 6 to 11.5 pounds. They also boated a snook, a catfish, and a trout for the Slam. We had a hell of a good time. Don is a real character, and a lot of fun. I hope maybe we can get together again for a fun trip or something before Charles comes stateside again next year.

It turned into a short work week, but it was a rewarding week of rekindling old friendships and building new ones.