Latest Outings

I've been fighting the weather and outsmarting myself with no fish to the boat as a result. I went to a new redfish flat with Jay a couple weeks back. We got blown off the water within an hour with no tails in sight early, and howling wind and whitecaps shortly after we paddled out.

I tried to cheat to get back to the tarpon spot yesterday. I picked up a used electric outboard, and a bracket for my Native Ultimate. I put in a full size 12 volt deep cycle/starting battery. It got me the full four miles one way. I pulled the motor out of the water and paddled in the last few hundreds yards (no motor zone). There were tarpon rolling and swirling all over. So far so good. I decided after the last trip that I needed a bait that could be seen easier or make more commotion due to the discolored water. I tried all of the noisy flashy things I picked up with no hits while fish rolled all around me. I finally switched back to the gold speckled Bait Buster (by D.O.A.) that they have hit for me before, and cursed myself for leaving the hook hone on the kitchen table that I bought hoping to get my hooks set better. Meanwhile the wind was picking up straight upriver. I got three solid strikes, only one of which I managed to keep on to the first jump. Pretty soon the wind was blowing so hard that it was blowing me through the 100 yards of tailing fish within a few casts. My anchor line isn't long enough to reach bottom there - bonehead! The bite stopped so I started back into that headwind, had to be a good 20 knots by now. 1/2 mile into the upwind trip the battery died. It was a good hour hard digging to get the other 1 /12 miles upwind before I could turn up the fork I launched on. With the extra weight of the motor and battery, and wind drag of the motor to remind me how clever I was.