Last ditch effort....
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…. this is the time of year that the average outdoorsman starts to get a little feverish: you start to see them loitering around fueling stations and acting funning in crowds bigger than the amount of people that would normally fit on their boat. Yes, that fever and irregular behavior means it’s spring time. The weather’s warming, the water temps are rising, the boats are dusty and begging for use.
However, it’s also the time of year you can wake up with a 5 mph west wind on a calm cool morning and think, “let’s go fishing,” go ahead and get the boat ready, and once you’re headed over the causeway ready for an epic day on the water, you notice a little bump on the water but think nothing of it. No big deal, right? Well, an hour later when you’re 21 miles offshore getting pummeled by 30 mph north wind and a “small craft advisory” has been posted that was conveniently overlooked or mispredicted by our good friends at NOAA and you tend to curse the weather guy.
One way to get through the blues of a windy day is get out to the mighty St. Johns where you can essentially “hide” from the windy conditions and get some long awaited fishing in-- at least, that’s what I did this weekend. Not really planning on doing much due to high winds and not so favorable conditions, I figured the weekend was a bust. Sunday I was becoming combative on the couch watching the outdoor channel and I finally just said F--- it and got off my butt and made something happen for myself. I grabbed the phone and called the only person I could think of that would be awake and willing to do something adventurous: I called the great northerner…Preston. I knew with the right type of invite I could make it appealing enough for him to skip church and go with me. I said, “Yo, Preston, skip church…come enjoy the fruits of the Lord’s creation and worship at the Church of the St. Johns with me.” And that’s all it took. We were off to the bait shop. The Friday before was the peek on the full moon so we weren’t in any kind of hurry. I think we ended getting to an acceptable spot around 1300 and got to it. With a targeted species of crappie, we had high hopes of all our minnows ending up in the bellies of a bucket full of specs. Well, that’s not quite what we caught but we did put a hurt on a cooler of butter cats and bud lights. I think the final tally was somewhere between 25-30 butters along with 3 or 4 straggler specs. The one spec that Preston brought in, with the LAST MINNOW by the way, hit the 1.5 lb range which was satisfying. It was nice having two meals for four of freshwater catfish.
Last ditch effort....
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…. this is the time of year that the average outdoorsman starts to get a little feverish: you start to see them loitering around fueling stations and acting funning in crowds bigger than the amount of people that would normally fit on their boat. Yes, that fever and irregular behavior means it’s spring time. The weather’s warming, the water temps are rising, the boats are dusty and begging for use.
However, it’s also the time of year you can wake up with a 5 mph west wind on a calm cool morning and think, “let’s go fishing,” go ahead and get the boat ready, and once you’re headed over the causeway ready for an epic day on the water, you notice a little bump on the water but think nothing of it. No big deal, right? Well, an hour later when you’re 21 miles offshore getting pummeled by 30 mph north wind and a “small craft advisory” has been posted that was conveniently overlooked or mispredicted by our good friends at NOAA and you tend to curse the weather guy.
One way to get through the blues of a windy day is get out to the mighty St. Johns where you can essentially “hide” from the windy conditions and get some long awaited fishing in-- at least, that’s what I did this weekend. Not really planning on doing much due to high winds and not so favorable conditions, I figured the weekend was a bust. Sunday I was becoming combative on the couch watching the outdoor channel and I finally just said F--- it and got off my butt and made something happen for myself. I grabbed the phone and called the only person I could think of that would be awake and willing to do something adventurous: I called the great northerner…Preston. I knew with the right type of invite I could make it appealing enough for him to skip church and go with me. I said, “Yo, Preston, skip church…come enjoy the fruits of the Lord’s creation and worship at the Church of the St. Johns with me.” And that’s all it took. We were off to the bait shop. The Friday before was the peek on the full moon so we weren’t in any kind of hurry. I think we ended getting to an acceptable spot around 1300 and got to it. With a targeted species of crappie, we had high hopes of all our minnows ending up in the bellies of a bucket full of specs. Well, that’s not quite what we caught but we did put a hurt on a cooler of butter cats and bud lights. I think the final tally was somewhere between 25-30 butters along with 3 or 4 straggler specs. The one spec that Preston brought in, with the LAST MINNOW by the way, hit the 1.5 lb range which was satisfying. It was nice having two meals for four of freshwater catfish. 
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