Sorry to leave you so long without an update!

Business is jumping thanks to a promotion we did with Living Social, at this point I have a couple days free in September and most of October's weekends are booked.  Fishing has been good, we've caught snapper, pompano, jack, snook, and even a barracuda.

I shouldn't really count the barracuda, someone else caught him and the line broke, we were just in the right place at the right time to see a bobber moving across the current.  Snapped a couple of pictures, revived him, and sent him on his way.

Aкула!

I was hoping to catch a fat jack and ended up with a shark on the hook.
     "Put down the net and grab the camera!"

     It wasn't a monster but on light tackle we both got a workout. 

     "Captain John Raasch, shark exerciser!"

Then the swivel popped and Toothy McShark hastily swam away.

DOA Shrimp strike again!

Sunday was another fine day for Treasure Coast fishing!  We ran up the ICW to Bear Point and landed two keepers and had plenty of other action.

Windy but fishable

Saturday morning the radar showed enough rain to go from coast to coast and cover us so I crawled back into bed.  By the time we got up the weather had cleared and we went kayaking instead of fishing -- next time we'll do both!

Sunday the weather was clear but the wind was kicking, probably 10 mph as I was loading the boat.  We saw some action and I even saw a small school of sheepshead swim under our bow but we only had one keeper, he tasted great on the grill with a side of grilled asparagus.  DOA shrimp look good enough I've been tempted to bite!

Going pro...

I was told having a blogspot website was "amateurish" and i should be able to afford a proper domain and web-hosting.  At first I was defensive as I thought I did pretty well with a free resource, but I've since accepted the criticism and have stepped up.  My new website is up and running, feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions.  I don't have plans to update the website itself very often other than to add photos but I will update this page much more frequently than I have been. 

The weather is warming up and I've been on the water pretty regularly.  Two weekends we went up the ICW to the power lines in hopes of limiting on sheepshead but the dolphins were the only ones who made out that day.  Last Saturday we stayed in the river hoping for another run of Crevalle Jacks but didn't have any luck there either.  This weekend we're hitting the flats in Jensen, hopefully we can bring in some trout and start restocking the freezer!

Happy New... February!

Time to dust off this website, it's been sitting too long.  Since my last post I got a bigger boat, a bigger truck to tow the bigger boat, and a bigger gas bill for both of them.  I also got a tablet so I can charge credit cards instead of just cash and PayPal.

I've been out almost every weekend since then but I've yet to take the big boat out the inlet, during the week the seas are gentle and the ICW is flat, once the weekend nears things get hairy and I'm stuck fishing the river or the ICW.  The catfish are plentiful and fat, the Jacks are smaller than I'm used to, and I haven't caught a bluefish at all this year.  I'm dying to get out to the ocean even if it's just trolling the beaches for Mackerel.  I don't have any clients lined up yet but I'll still head out this weekend if the seas cooperate.

No news is... no news.

Sorry for the lack of updates, between the storms and the daily grind I've spent less time on the water than I'm accustomed to.  The week before Sandy I took the missus out on the river and she was killing the ladyfish with a topwater lure.  She thought they were snook until they started dancing across the surface, they might be garbage fish but they put on a good show!  I learned two lessons that day; "Don't stop reeling until they're landed" because they can easily spit out your lure, and "Don't fish for ladyfish with treble hooks" because if they hit one hook they're very likely to get caught on at least one more!

Today we hit the river and saw plenty of action but the fish weren't picking up what we were laying down.  We tried live fingerlings and sand perch and frozen shrimp, all we got were skates and a little snapper.  I almost landed a snook but almost doesn't count.  There may have been two of them but I'm pretty sure he came back to taunt me again; both times it hit my bait, ran with it, fought me, and spit it out next to the boat.  It wasn't a toothy fish because the sand perch was still alive after both attacks.