For months, my son (Elliott) has been restoring his grandfather’s skiff. The boat was old and in rough shape but Elliott’s efforts have made the boat “fishable” once again. While there are still a multitude of things yet to done (there always is with a boat), we used it on a fishing trip with Jon Carmain and his son Jon A. On the day of the trip, it was windy and there were whitecaps on the Wando River. To make matter worse, several inches of rain made water quality and clarity poor. All of this added up to a tough afternoon of fishing.
When you are not catching many fish, it leaves a lot of time to talk. It was fun getting to know Jon and Jon A. Super guys. Given the tough conditions, we started out using live shrimp on lead head jigs. We cast the shrimp to Redfish that we could see moving along a slight depth transition on a shallow flat. While we were around the fish, bites we few and far between. Fishing was slow, of the few fish we did catch, Jon A caught most of the them. This started a friendly banter between father and son. Jon smiled and told me he was just letting Jon A get a head start. I replied, that I do that all the time when fishing with Elliott. We all shared a good laugh. While we did not catch a lot of fish, Elliott and I made some new friends. Perhaps, that is the best catch of all.
Stayed tuned for the follow up to this trip. Jon A and Elliott have challenged Jon and me to a fish-off. A no holds barred Fathers vs. Sons fishing contest. We may not catch any fish but we will have a great time!