My daughter wanted to go fishing again. The only problem was that she is a very late riser and the best tide was at 6am. We were going at 2pm and it would be pretty deep in the area we were going to fish.
SteveT arrived in town this afternoon and we had planned a quick trip to the flats anyway just to get out there and throw some line and hope to get a bonefish. But the places we would hit were way too deep for her so I brought along a small two-step folding ladder for her to use. She wanted to toss a spinner but I didn't want to handle bait so I rigged the rod with an Adjust-A-Bubble bobber and a long 15 pound fluorocarbon leader and tied on a size 6 fly. She also wanted to try a fly rod but I figured a single action reel would be too complicated for her to handle IF something hit so I slapped on a Billy Pate Tarpon anti-reverse reel on a 12 weight rod so she could crank away and land the fish quickly.
As expected the water was high and slightly off color but we set up on a spot where I had hooked and lost a fish the previous day. I gave SteveT the run of the reef and settled in behind my daughter as she climbed up the short ladder and began to bomb casts way out onto the flats. Her spinner casting had improved a lot in the past few years and she could really lay some line out. The weight of the Adjust-A-Bubble also helped a lot.
I moved down a few yards from her and began to cast with the fly rod but 15 minutes later my daughter wanted to try it out. I pulled in some line and showed her how to use two hands to cast the rod and she went at it. Switching from casting a spinner to thowing fly line is not easy and the first few casts were a mess, but after showing her how to use both hands to cast the line (sort of like using a spey rod) and not cranking up and whipping it back and forward, she managed to get a decent amount of line out.
However, casting 30 feet of line isn't as impressive as throwing 50 to 60 yards of monofilament so even though she thought the fly rod was 'ok', but she decided to stick with the spinning rod for now.
We stayed for three hours and moved around a bit but got no bites. SteveT's luck wasn't any better and my daughter accused me of taking her fishing at spots where there were no fish. A tough client. I didn't get a tip.
