Yesterday morning, conditions were right and the Solunar tables showed a feeding period between 6-8:00 AM. My buddies had left for home, but I wanted one more shot at 'em, so I went by myself. I got to the island I wanted to fish and saw big schools of bait and fish busting 'em up. It was 6:15 am, and I knew I didn’t have long, so I grabbed my rod and reel, my landing net, my pliers, and my stringer and hopped into the water. I’d anchored my boat about a quarter mile from where I was going to fish. I waded as fast as I could because I knew time was critical. Second cast I caught a nice trout. Then a couple of casts later another…and another. It was ON! Then, a jack crevalle spooled me and broke my leader. Fortunately, I always use a mono leader a little lighter than my main line for just such occasions. The set up worked perfectly. I reeled back in 100+ yards of braid and saw the leader had broken like it was supposed to do. When I grabbed the leader and went to tie on another jig, I realized that in my haste to get into the water and get to the spot I had hopped into the water without my shoulder strap tackle box that had all my plastics in it. I keep a small tackle box on my wading belt that had a few lead head jigs and snap swivels in it…and there was one rigged jig in there. I tied it on and went back to catching trout. In the excitement, I had gotten a knot in my braid. Not wanting to take the time to cut off so much line and retie, I kept casting…knot in the line…and kept catching fish. Finally, the line gave up and on a hard cast, the line snapped like a rifle shot and my last jig sailed off out of sight. I was done for the day. I left em biting as I waded back to my boat. From 6:30 - 7:30 am, it was the hottest trout bite I’ve been on in quite a while.
Harold Wilcox
www.haroldshogwash.com