Never before...in 9 Years.

It was a crisp cold morning on January 25th and as I was sitting waiting on my client, Paul, at the landing, I had no idea that I would have one of the strangest realizations of my entire 9 years of guiding later that day.

We took off a little ahead of schedule, meaning the tide was a little too high to see fish on the mudflats, so we headed to some white shell.  After looking there for a bit and seeing limited life, we headed a little closer to the ocean where the tide would be lower.  Pulling out of a little creek that was low already, we arrived onto a mud flat, and it wasn't long until we found a nice school of about 200 Redfish.  

Paul was casting one of my Loomis Greenwater spinning rods with a shallow water twitch bait on it and on the first cast he made he locked in on the fish pictured here, which I watched rise right out of the center of the school to eat.

We hooked and released quite a few more fish.

 The school stayed pretty happy until a large yacht came through the cut, slowed down for a few seconds and then sped back up, as if he was trying to push the largest possible wake he could, which forced me to sit on the tower and my client to step into the bottom of the boat until the wake passed.  The fish moved up to the next little cove and seemed to settle down a bit, so we pulled up and placed a few more casts to the school, which was more split up now.  Three casts in I saw the white mouth of a nice fish open to take the lure, Paul set and the fight was on.  This final fish ate about an hour and half after the first fish we caught; we took a few pictures and released it. 

Paul gave me his email address when we got back to the landing so I could send over the photos that evening.  I pulled out a few images and was getting ready to send them when I took a harder look at the first and last fish of the day.  I noticed that both fish had the same wound on the dorsal, the same parasite on the back dorsal and one on the pectoral fin.  The final nail in the coffin was a white line through the spot on the tail.  It was the same fish!

I can't say I have never had this happen, but I have never been able to prove that it happened or even had reason to believe it did.  Looking back there are quite a few details that make hooking the same fish incredibly amazing; I wasn't exaggerating about there being 200 fish in this school, the schooled had moved over 100 yards while we caught a few out of it, the fish were more spread out, the fish fought harder the second time around, and the rest of the school had lock jaw when this final fish ate.

I don't think I will forget this day anytime soon, but most of all it just goes to show how out on the water you never stop learning things and new experiences seem to be infinitely possible.