By: Dan Carns
Every now and then someone crosses my path while guiding that not only has some natural abilities but is also hyper focused on the elements that help them master the sport of fishing. What I recently was unprepared for was this youngster who completely blew me away with his dedication.
Will was traveling to Fort Myers for a baseball tournament so his parents hired us to take him out Kayak Fishing. Due to the wind direction we tried to launch on the western shore of Pine Island but found it too shallow so we back tracked and headed to Matlacha.
Once launched again, we headed to a spot that had been producing some Snook and Redfish. We found a bunch of Spotted Sea Trout on the way out and I began to recognize Will’s intense approach toward the fish. He was using all new gear to him including different lures and techniques, but he watched every single cast. Distance, water depth, speed of retrieval and disturbance near his cast. He was logging anything that presented differently from every previous cast. He also began to describe every hit and hookset like he was on film in a tournament. Mind you, Will is fourteen years old but his parents mentioned that he spends a lot of time fishing with his buddies.
We finally anchored up in front of a mangrove lined shore line that features a shell hash bottom that drops off quickly to about five feet deep. We threw a bunch of plastic baits but only received half-hearted tags that seemed more like the fish were annoyed at their presence. We switched to a Cajun Rattling cork tipped with a live shrimp on a circle hook, attached to about 20” of fluorocarbon leader. Will had never used this setup but on his first cast the cork went under instantly. Will gave the line his best Bass hookset and pulled the hook straight out of the fish’s mouth. After describing exactly how a circle hook works he sent his cork out and it again went instantly under. Like a longtime pro, Will patiently gave this fish a few seconds, slowly began to lift his rod while cranking the handle, drawing all the slack out and only when he felt the fish did he set the hook! This is a difficult maneuver to master but Will did it on the first try. Amazingly we had parked ourselves in front of a huge school of feeding Snook so after catching and photographing his fifteenth Snook I wondered if we were lower in the water column would we have the same luck. We re-rigged the cork with a 4’ leader and proceeded to boat five redfish in the exact same place. These fish were in the shell hash bottom feeding directly under the Snook!
Will spent the next two hours hyper focused on all the little details until he could pick and choose which species to catch while I sat in awe at this young future talent!
It’s A Wild World-Get Out There
Dan Carns
@paddlinandfishin
@gulfcoastkayak