12/3 – This morning I had the pleasure of fishing with two fantastic anglers – Emmit and his father Frank. With as bad as the weather has been lately – Saturday was a miracle. Not cold and the light north wind left us with slick calm conditions – perfect for trout fishing. Boy were we right – the trout were biting and we hit ’em hard. In fact, emmit got one on his first cast!

We started off working some scattered fish – plucking away at the smaller spikeheads (11-13″). This trend continued for a few hours before we decided to try a couple of other locations. That switch paid off – we were into the fish quickly and they were a much better class of fish than the morning bunch with most being in the legal 12-15″ range. Today the biat of choice was the natural colored (ie almost completely clear) Riptide Lures Realistic Shrimp on a white jighead. It out-produced everything 10 to 1 – even gulps.

While we were getting the trout on nearly every cast, we got to witness a pretty cool site. There were loons (er, I mean Harker’s Island Turkeys) all around the boat and on several occasions a groupe of them would dive to the bottom and would actually push large schools of sand perch to the surface. The big sand perch would actually boil on the surface as the loons ate them and the pelicans dove on them – it was not only incredible but also one of the weirdest thing’s I’ve ever seen!

Back to trout – while the fish weren’t big today they were a good legal size. Frank did get the best fish of the day though – a 19″ 2.5lb fish that ate a riptide shrimp. Emmit and Frank got their limit with ease and we probably boated over 60 fish today, easy.

Good fishing, great weather and excellent company – it was great meeting you guys and even better spending some time with you on the water.

11/30 – With a short break in the weather, the dog and I got to get out and do a little red fishin’ for a couple hours. We found some decent fish and I was able to land three on New Penny colored Riptide Flats chub soft plastics. I did hook a massive 35″+ fish on a gold spoon but he broke the hook before I get him boatside…