After the day before they were debating weather to head for home with the crippled boat. This is what most would have done but Barry had to stay because of business in the city in the beginning of the week. They decided to have me take them inshore fishing for the day. We get a late start. By 7:00 the Delta Marina parking lot is full. I see a lot of boats coming from the West and going East already. This is telling me conditions are not good to the west or they just don't have the patients but due to the pop up storms I decide to stay close and go West. We had a tide that was almost at high so the bite was not going to be outstanding.
On the way out I notice some birds working. We stop and get started. There are a lot of shorts and many hard head catfish. I did not waste much time there. At my targeted area there is a little bit of water moving. Although stained it is fishable. Barry gets the first respectable trout.
It was a steady bite with so many shorts and catfish to go through I did not even bother to count what we had in the box. Every now and then I would invite one for dinner. I was just happy to find some big enough to take home. After about an hour of this Add hooks up to something different. I know almost at once what we have on the line. I direct him to steer the fish to the other side of the boat and get the net ready. This put a smile on Add's face. One of the few times I saw him with one this entire weekend. At 27.5 inches we have now changed the color of our fish box.
As slow as the fish are coming into the box I decide to join in. I manage a 13.5 inch trout and soon after I also change the color of out fish box with a flounder. Mike is not doing well in the big fish catching department. He managed 1 or 2 in the box but nothing over 13 inches. Add gets the idea of putting one of the 4-5 inch croaker on his line that we caught and I put in the live well. This almost instantly put our biggest trout of the day in our fish box. It was a few hours before Mike gets something worthy of a picture. The problem was with the storms nearby the wind was enough to make the lines slack. He was having a hard time keeping the slack out enough to get a good hook set. I give him credit for fishing hard and working for every fish he put in the boat.
The fishing was steady and we also put some flounder in the box here and there. I bounced around from place to place but never left the general area.
A little after noon we had some lightning from a distance in front of us. It was far enough away for us not to worry but to keep us ever alert. Another storm in back of us and a lot closer was flowing water down. This was the one generating the winds. With the bite almost nil at this time I moved about 3 miles away. This move was a mistake as the water was dirty and no bites. I moved to another place about 4 miles from there but right around the corner from the marina. This was very sheltered and we found the cleanest water yet. It was flowing out of a back pond and had a school of trout there. All the trout were undersized but there was a lot of them. We started to get a sprinkle and the guys called it a day. After the bad luck the day before they were not going to push the odds.
Back at my place there was a discussion about how many trout we had. I said a dozen or so. 2 other guesses were 9 and 10. When we hung them up we had 15 trout, 3 redfish, 4 flounder, and 2 sheepshead. Put some meat on the table anyway.
Life is Good.
Fishing is not a matter of life or death. It's more important than that.
CAPT HOOP -- OUR FREEDOM
