What a week. I took the first part of the week off, and had the later part of the week booked up. We had great tides, and I was all geared up to put my parties on some great fishing. As anyone who follows the weather here knows, Mother Nature had a different idea.

I had spent another day at Smith Marine, and Craig had installed a new technology rechargable drycell battery in my boat. It is a 24 volt pack that only weighs about 30 pounds, and is supposed to take a full recharge in about three hours. The weight savings over the gelcell batteries I have been using is phenominal. I was anxious to test them out. We had also installed my freshly rebuilt Mach prop. I had asked them to put as much cup in the prop as was possible, hoping to put an end to the prop ventilation problem inherent in tunnel-hull boats. But, the test would have to wait.

Mother Nature sent us a weather system that might as well have been a tropical storm for all the raining it did. Some areas of west coast Florida got as much as 13 inches of rain in a 24 hour period. Needless to say, the rest of

For the rest of the morning, Terry and his one angler, Don, and Tom, Tina, and I caught redfish, sometimes five at a time until it was time to go home. We also caught some nice snook. By morning's end, Tom and Tina had caught 8 snook to 27 inches, 45 redfish to 26 inches, 2 trout, and 3 jacks, and were pretty well worn out.

The next day I had Bob and Carol Bass, of St. Cloud, Florida, for a repeat trip. I'd taken them out last September 13, and they had caught around 40 snook. I wanted to do at least as well again this year. When they called to book, they said they'd been fishing around Estero all week and hadn't caught a thing. I though a repeat of the day before might be appropriate.

That morning, Bob, Carol, and their son-in-law David, caught some jacks and ladyfish as I loaded both baitwells in anticipation of the heavy chumming I would soon be doing. Even though I was very early on the tide, I decided to go straight to the flats we would fish, and chum my way into the area. David picked up a red on a spoon as we poled and chummed across the flat, but there was a surprised awaiting us when I anchored up on my final destination. As soon as I began chumming, snook started blowing up on the shiners. We put some shiners out in the skinny water suspended about a foot under small popping corks, and proceeded to catch snook after snook, sometimes 3 at a time until we had caught around 30 snook to 28 inches, including lots of keepers. What a nice surprise.

I continued with the chumming, and as the tide flooded the flat the snook tapered off and the reds began boiling on baits all around the boat. Show time! We caught redfish for the rest of the trip, 3 and 4 at a time. When I declared the trip over at 1:00 we had caught somewhere around 50 reds to 27 inches. We tried our best to keep an accurate count, but with the action so fast and furious, it was just impossible. But, if you do the math, we may well have caught more than 50. That's more than 80 fish for the morning!

The fishing remained good through the rest of the week, but with later and weaker tides, there was no matching those early week trips. You know, it can be great fun to get the fish turned on like that, but it's not something I do as a regular practice. When the fishing gets too easy, and becomes just catching, it looses something. Fishing needs to remain fishing to give the optimum pleasure to the fisherman. Part of what makes fishing fun is the anticipation that the next cast may be the one that brings the big hit, and the challenge of converting that hit into a hookup. Besides, who wouldn't agree that 25 to 30 snook and reds over the course of a morning isn't a great morning of fishing?

The coming week is offering outgoing and low tides until later in the week. This will require a change in strategy for those who will be fishing. I recommend you get out and fish those potholes on the last of the outgoing. Pothole fishing can be great fun. By late in the week there will be good water on the flats early in the day. Good fishing.

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