07/10/2020 Saltwater Fishing the Gulf With Uncle Mike
Every time I get frustrated about not doing a better job keeping up with the field reports I’m reminded of Uncle Rick’s good advice regarding his ranch journal. “It’s a journal, not a novel. Just write something and move on.”
I hesitate to say the only reason I took my family to Florida for a summer vacation was because fishing was involved but I won’t do so long. I took my family to Florida because fishing was involved. It started when my dad offered to buy me a flight to Florida to go fish with Uncle Mike at his fish camp on Pine Island off the western coast of southern Florida.
I respectfully declined saying I couldn’t in good conscience go to Florida on vacation with my family to see my family (something my wife has been harassing me to do for several years) until I went to Florida on vacation with MY FAMILY to see her family.
Motivated, by fish and low fares, I found a quad pack of Allegiant Air round trip tickets to Fort Lauderdale (a mere 30 minutes from Whitney’s cousin and my good friends Brian and Angie Bentz) from Memphis for $280 before baggage. I promptly booked the flights without my wife’s consent and started scheming with Uncle Mike about a fishing trip since his camp was less than three hours from Whit’s family. In typical Cline fashion, he admitted to being wide open and willing to host.
We agreed to meet at fish camp Thursday evening and even though I got there around 11:30, Uncle Mike still had dinner and cold beers ready. We visited until almost 1 am then hit the sack.
We got up around 7 and were on the water before 8. The first treat of the day was an aggregation of manatees that curiously swam around and under the boat when we stopped to fish just outside the canal. I got some iPhone video but it doesn’t do justice the enormity and tranquility of these animals.
We went over an hour without a bite before Uncle Mike broke the ice with a ladyfish and a pair of trout. I followed with a ladyfish and a few trout (all off lead heads with big light colored bodied tails with charetreuse tips).
After seeing some tarpon break, we got on a school of fish that carried the day. At one point, I lost tarpon on back-to-back casts. Other times I would catch trout two or three casts in a row. Uncle Mike and I also had several double hook ups or “matched pairs” as he called them. I like that expression, of scientific experimentation, rather than poker as one might initially conclude. I suspect we caught upward of 40 speckled trout on the day.
Red tide closed harvest of trout until 2021 but I caught a nice bluefish that we put in the ice chest and grilled that night.
After the day’s fishing, we took an extremely long nap (like 2pm to 7pm long) and woke up refreshed but still beat. Instead of trying to push a thread and fish that evening we opted to go get a few groceries, take a tour of Pine Island, then cook and visit some more. Dinner was an excellent combo of grilled pork chops and blue fish, cole slaw, corn, and whiskey.
The next morning we fished again and had a little rougher go, grabbing maybe a dozen trout and a few hardheads and ladyfish.
It didn’t matter. We had already capped the most excellent mini-saltwater fishing trip with an Uncle in my lifetime. I am grateful to Uncle Mike for his skill and execution, his graciousness as a host, and his willingness to let me do my dumb fish and film thing.
