#12 WIN D

Saturday 5-16-26

When someone wants to go fishing for the first time you want to put them on a good fish. We were hoping for a better weather window for my sister’s first time on the water, but we had to work with her window of opportunity. It was her day off and the inshore bite has been pretty good lately, so we made it happen. We launched early to get ahead of the wind forecast, but it was breezy from the start with a small period. All morning we worked really hard for a bite. The water was 66.5 degrees and it remained that temperature for most of the day. We trolled, stopped to cast on marks, but nothing was working. If we had live bait maybe we could have picked off a few more fish in the morning, but we decided to skip on buying bait. Since it was Nicole’s first time on the water she had a lot to learn. She got a lot of practice reeling in the Rapalas, and spent some time learning to cast. It was not the easiest day to learn how to do these things, and fishing was very slow. Just when we were about to call it a day around 2 pm, we finally got a bite. This was a perfect fish to practice reeling in. She got it to the boat, grabbed a quick picture and released it back. It was a nice sized Calico around 16 inches. They are fun to catch but personally we would rather release them. We kept fishing and within 30 minutes we heard that sound we love so much. Hook up! Nicole picked it up and started her first real fight with a fish. It was a nice one, and it fought harder than she expected. Classic Yellowtail head shakes. It saw the boat and took another big run. This was everything we had hoped she would experience on her first fishing trip! We helped her get it to the boat again, gaffed it, and it was over the rail. The day was a win, even though it was windy. After a rough day of slow fishing this one felt nice, and I think she is hooked.