The last few days have been very busy and enjoyable. I have fished with a number of families and groups of friends. One of the best parts of what I do is being part of life long memories. I do my best to make sure that they are happy ones. One thing that I always tell the parents on a family fishing trip is that they may have started a lifelong interest for their kids and that I may be the standard that every future trip is measured against. I tell them as the kids are boating one fish right after another and any time a bobber sits on the surface for more than a minute or two I ask to see if the bait is still on the hook. The last couple of these trips have been on days with perfect blue skies and not enough wind to cool the heat of the sun. Making it necessary to go for a boat ride at some point to cool off a little.
Most of my mornings start with a striper fishing trip on the St. George River. The fishing is very good with fish holding on structure in the usual places. Not a wild scene with fish chasing bait on the surface but the kind of fishing a guide has to work at steadily to produce results for clients. Moving frequently as each stop only produces a few fish with a few unproductive stops thrown in for good measure.
The big news is that the bigger fish have showed up this week. Monday afternoon I was fishing in the lower river and had started to drift a stretch of shore when I looked over the stern of the boat and saw a giant striper finning on the surface. At first I thought it was dying because it really was not moving very much but I watched and saw that it was simply checking out the clumps of rockweed floating on the surface. As it slowly swam toward the boat I shouted for my client to quickly flop his lure in front of the fish but he did not see it and had enough line still out that he could not quickly pick up and plop it in front of the fish. In hindsight I don’t know what we would have done with a fish better than four feet long on ten feet of line anyway. I also briefly entertained jumping in and grabbing the fish but decided against it when I thought of how much better a swimmer a fish of that size is than I am. I have of course been looking for it ever since but no luck so far, I suppose that the fun is just knowing that the possibility exists of a client catching a fish of that size.
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