I fished another day for Venice Sportsman's lodge. Same bunch of guys but they all switched boats so I had 2 different guys today. Not a problem. With storms threatening by noon I did not want to run far so I went to where I left them biting yesterday. The water was a lot cleaner and my hopes increased for some nice trout. We gave that place a good try using bait and plastics including Voo Doo shrimp on the bottom and under a cork. Not even a sniff. I spent over a half hour there.
My next point I wanted to go to had 2 boats on it so I moved up a bit and fished an small opening. Nothing there but a long cast with the assistance of the wind gave us our first fish. A rat but it showed me where they were.
I repositioned the boat so we could fish the edges a bit better and we weeded through the short ones until we had our first keeper.
There were a lot of shorts and every once in a while we would get a keeper. For one of the guys this was a treat because the day before he only had 1 fish all day. We were putting some fish in the box and I even had a chance to get an 18 inch keeper.
The action was steady for a bit over an hour then it slowed down. Another boat in our group came over to talk and he did so with his big motor so that spooked the fish. I decided to move away and let the fish get settled down. We had 7 in the box at this time and we put back another 20 or more shorts so it was already a good day.
I moved to 2 other places with no love. Before I left the area I went back to our (honey hole) of the day. This time the bite was slow and eventually ended but before we left we had 8 in the box.
It was 11:00 and they were very happy with all the action they already had. I wanted to try 2 other places near by. The first was a bust but the second was the place they would fill their limit in the box. We did not have the action as in the earlier place but we sat there and waited until they came by looking for some food. One of them decided to eat lunch and consume a cold beverage which gave me a chance to fish again. He had to put his beer down in order to net my flounder but before he could get to the net I swam the fish into the boat and it was on the deck.
We had fish right at the 26-27 inch mark but nothing over 27 inches. Around noon they called it and we headed in. The threats of severe weather was a big factor in our quit decision. I made a couple of quick stops as we headed in but nothing else happened.
It was a relaxing type of trip although the action had me jumping around the boat a lot. They enjoyed the day.
Life is Good!
Fishing is not a matter of life or death. It's more important than that.
CAPT HOOP -- OUR FREEDOM