Well, I went fishing Saturday even though the wind forecast was pretty sucky. I loaded up the yak, 3 rods, anchor, stake out stick, all the normal goodies with a few notable exceptions.
First - no cameras. I don’t know why, but I just wasnt motivated for shooting video or grip and grin shots, so the Oly and GoPro stayed on the shelf
Second - no measuring board. Kinda goes with the no camera thing
Third- no usable cell phone, but not by my choice. Verizon was “pushing” an update on my blackberry, so no working phone for almost 4 hours.
When I hit the water there wasn’t a breath of wind. The first thought that goes through my mind i “fantastic, the weather man got it wrong in a good way for once.” I paddled upstream against a falling tide to a nice broad mud flat that ususally holds fish in cool weather. I stopped paddling several yards before the entrance and silently went gliding in. Within a few seconds I saw a decent red pushing toward me and small shrimp popping as he worked. I had one rod rigged with Z-Man scented shrimpz on a trigger hook, so I quickly flipped it about 4 feet in front of the fish, let it settle, pop, pop, pop BOOM - Fish on. A roughly 22 inch red came quickly to the yak.
Sadly, when I set the hook on the one about 30 more spooked off the flat- quite a sight as they all came bolting past me and no video running on the yak… oh well C’est la vie
Then the wind started blowing, just a little at first, but in 30 minutes the wind machine was on full force with 15 sustained and gusts to 20.
It was blowing up the river against a falling tide, so I thought I’d paddle down a ways against the wind while the tide was in my favor, then ride wind and tide back a couple hours later. What’s that saying about the best laid plans???
I’d paddle a bit, fish a likely looking spot, get blown backwards, repeat, repeat until I got as far down as I wanted to be for an easy float and fish back to the landing. I paddled past a deep slough to let the wind blow me back as I hopped a bait along the botto
