Since retiring from the ranks of the endangered State Employees on March 31st, I had yet to hook up to the boat and go fishing. I've been ask so many times "Ya been fish'n yet?"....that I was tired of hearing it. Been real busy working on my work list that's taped to the kitchen cabinet. Between mow'n grass, triming tree limbs from the roof of my shop, pressure washing shop..house.. and deck, cutting sweet gum saplings and clearing the lake front, build some pressure treated 2X3 hand rail to replace some rotten stuff at Church and install, install a shelf in the bathroom, doing some interior painting at Church... retirement is really wear'n me down! My wife and I decided to head to Econfina on Sunday afternoon. We got on the water around 3:30 and headed West. We set up our first drift just South of the Aucilla mouth. Conditions were pretty good, water clear but stained, water temp was 80 deg. My wife began with a CT and a white curly tail grub and I tied on a big white spook with big red eyes, pink throat and silver sides. Within a few minutes, I saw a pretty good fish swipe at the spook (underneath), but never broke the water. A couple more casts and a nice trout came up and stomped all over it. The fish stayd hooked and we brought in the boat.
Slap it on the stick and verified a good 26" fish.
Spent the next few minutes extracting treble hooks from the net.
On the next cast, had another great hit and landed a solid 22" trout.
I ask my wife if She wanted to release it and work on a bigger one since it was her "over 20" inch fish". After considering her input and the physical impact on my body as a result of option to release,
I placed it in the cooler with big sister. Over all, the trout seemed to be in a curious and playfull mode. I had several blow ups and short strikes. I also had two and three trout follow the spook all the way to the boat just under it. Sometimes they would just come up and nudge it when I would pause. We added a 17 incher and one short to the afternoons results before heading in. Plastics did not seem to produce well at all for us and all fish came on topwater. Really enjoyed the afternoon. I need to find a job so I can have more time on the water!
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"Good Judgement" comes from experience, ... and a lot of that..... results from "Bad Judgement".
Umm,I think that would be studette.
