Your dad is in the front of the boat and he is wearing you out. You ask what he is doing that you are not doing and he says, "you're not holding your mouth right". How many times have we heard that? Dad would be in the front of the boat throwing a green and white H&H and so would I. He would be catching regularly and I would be lucky to catch one. Of coarse a lot of it had to do with him having more experience and FRONTING me!
Last week I talked about an old dog learning new tricks and this will expound a little bit on what goes on sometimes when one person is catching all the fish. Sometimes it is a lure or retrieve thing. Other times it is something all together different.
My family has been fishing for years. And when we are all together in the boat we usually catch a lot of fish. An usually we are all catching. This was not the case one afternoon in July.
We were on a little bit of a reunion trip on Grand Isle. Multiple families used to get together every year to go hang out on Grand Isle for a week. We always stay at Bridgeside Marina when we go. We used to have many basketball games there in the afternoons. We didn't play any basketball this year but we did play a very intertaning frisbee game. I can't remember the name of it but it has two cans and you play teams. It was fun playing and it was fun to watch also.
We had been on about a five or six year hiatus from it because of our children being in high school and then college. Well Susan, (Carolyn Neyland) and my wife got to talking and it was back on for this year. It was a blast, but let me get back to the story. But here are a couple of the festive pictures.
We had caught a few fish that day and it was getting hot, so we put up the Bimini top and decided to try another spot. There were afternoon rain clouds building so we couldn't go to one spot we wanted because it looked like it was raining there already. So we ran to another spot that looked liked we could fish awhile before the rain would get us.
Alden set the anchor and everybody else was getting their lines baited. We were all throwing fixed rattling popping corks with live shrimp. We got our lines in the water and my cork went down. I pulled in a nice keeper and got another shrimp and cast out. A couple of pops and my cork went down again. Another keeper in the boat. And a couple of, hey! let us catch one.
Again, and again. I had four in the boat and now it was what the hell are you doing that we aren't. I said I have a small hook and no weight for one thing. Missed one.....I wasn't looking because I was eyeing the storm that we thought would go on the gulf side of the island but looked like it might be headed our way.
As a pulled my line in to re-bait, I held the terminal end up for them all to look at. And I said, my knot has opened up a little and the hook is free to move. That might be the ticket.
I baited and threw out again and told them that we needed to start getting ready to move as soon as I catch this next fish!
Sometimes the difference between catching and not catching is like winning and not winning, the smallest of things make the difference.
I was using a heavy fluorocarbon leader, no weight and a small Owner bait hook, which was about half the size of the 1/0 Kahle hooks they were using, although the hook gap was about the same. And I really think that loose knot had something to do with it. That's holding your mouth right.
Soft rides and hard strikes!!!