4 of us (me, my wife and our 2 adult sons) went out with Captain Bryce on a warm December day that was literally “the calm before the storm”. Pleasant temps with no wind early, 70s with light breeze in the afternoon and then a cold front late in the day with gale for winds and temps in the 20s overnight.
We had planned to start at 8am but I got a text overnight from Captain Bryce suggested we push it to 9am since there could be duck hunters in the area where he wanted to go. We actually left the harbor about 9:30 which was fine since things started out very slow in the morning since the water was so calm.
The boat was great and well setup for fishing in the shallows. Unfortunately, the trolling motor wasn’t working during our trip so the outboard had to be used to move around which is more disruptive in the shallow water. The controls for the outboard are all up on the top of the tower so Captain Bryce spent a lot of time going up and down the tower and wasn’t always available on deck.
Captain Bryce obviously know the area and where the fish are. He wasn’t afraid to move when the fish weren’t biting in a spot. Early when there was no wind, there were no items so we moved but later in the day once the wind came up a little, we returned and the same spots were productive.
All in all we caught 5 slot Reds, nothing undersized, all nice fish. In addition we had 7 that seemed to be well hooked, we got them part way to the boat but they they got off. Had we landed all of those, we would have had our limits.
After my wife who had caught the first fish of the day, she had 2 get off later in the day. I went to replace her bait and I noticed her hook was badly straighted. I pointed it out to Captain Bryce and he quickly changed it. He’d been baiting her hook previously and apparently hadn’t noticed the bent hook. One of my sons also lost 3 fish that seemed to be hooked well. I’ll never know if his hook was also bent because prior to noticing my wife’s, he got a fish on and got it up to the boat when it made a run under the boat and got into the shallow water anchor and cut the line.
All in all, we had enough action that we all had fun. Not a great day but I think a lot had to do with the weather and the incoming cold front. I wish there had been more attention paid to the integrity of the hooks since I really do believe we’d have landed more of the fish we’d hooked.
Captain Bryce did what he could to find where the fish were biting and it definitely changed as the day went on. I really appreciate that he was watching the weather and kept us on the water as long as he could.
We got back to the harbor, got the fish cleaned and were on our way about 30 minutes before the high winds started.
4 of us (me, my wife and our 2 adult sons) went out with Captain Bryce on a warm December day that was literally “the calm...