Dodging the lightning

I fished Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, dodging thunder storms the whole way. The tide was late enough for me to fish in HHI right after work on Friday.

I got there and immediately saw about three tailing…I made 2 casts and hooked up on an 18 inch fish on a gold crab pattern.

As soon as I let that fish go the sky absolutely opened up. It was raining so hard that you couldn’t see a fish moving on the flat unless he was standing at your feet waving at you. Then the lightning started. I moved in to the tree line and took shelter from the lightning…it did not help the rain which I sat in for the next hour waiting for the lightning to pass.

The lightning did finally pass and I changed position on the flat. Fished for a little while without seeing a redfish, but it was still raining and visibility was tough. Moved again and the rain stopped and I started seeing some movement. I ended up catching one more, and missed one.

By now the tide had fallen too much and I did not see any more fish moving.

I went out again with my daughter and her friend to a flat near the house on Saturday. There were again thunderstorms, but we dodged the main storms, and the lightning stayed relatively far away (8-12 miles). I saw alot of fish, and cast to at least 10 different fish. It was a frustrating evening for me…I was pulling out all the bad habits all at once, flailing the water, moving the fly to aggresively, not exercising patience to wait for a good cast, you name it. I finally did catch one, on one of my spoon flies:

I also had another on that I lost, then at 820pm on my way out I saw a fish busting something on the bank, and I managed to cath this one:

[IMG]http://i991.photobucket.com/alb