Saltwater

Fishing is one of those things in life where you can do your best planning, but in the end must defer to King Weather.

Fishing for sheepshead gains popularity each winter like fans jumping on the proverbial bandwagon of a winning college football team.

It had been far too long since I’d been to Sarasota. Places like Longboat Key, Siesta Key, St. Armands Circle, the Asolo Theater and the Ringling Complex tugged at my mind.

I'd been to Savannah twice before and found it to be a marvelous destination with superb historic homes, numerous lush city squares, excellent art galleries, and gourmet restaurant

South Louisiana is one of my favorite fishing destinations. Very few places offer such a diversity of species to fish, both inshore and offshore. And very few places offer you such fertile water that ensures no one goes home without something in the cooler. Two of my favorite inshore species to fish are redfish and speckled trout.

Snook (centropomus undecimalus) are generally found along the structure of inshore brackish ecologies. Because of its temperature tolerance range and tropical/Central/South American origins, "USA snook" are only found in quite fishable numbers in Florida.

Proverbial oceans of time had passed since I'd been in blue water pursuing sailfish. I'd hunted, captured, and released hundreds of the spindlebeaks with the unrelenting ferocity that made me sure I'd never stop. But I did, in favor of the sandy shallows countless moons ago. Whatever currents and forces move the lives of men and fish is what I suspect urged me oceanward once again; but I can't be certain. It wasn't even a matter of "pez vela's" absence making the heart grow fonder. I simply wanted to fish for them again.

Southwestern Louisiana is bayou territory and the Lake Charles area is home to plenty of redfish and trout in the marshes of Big Lake. Traveling to the end of Big Pasture Road in Calcasieu Parish brings the traveling angler to Grosse Savanne Lodge. There are still plenty of cattle in the big pasture but the real wildlife treasure lie in the several thousand acres of bayou that holds large and aggressive redfish.

Every place we seek game fish — inland, in the coastal shallows, or off in the marine deep — has its own unique character. And what makes it special depends on each angler and boater. When we adventure after a specific species, the globe tightens, the list of destinations grows much shorter and the competition begins.

Traveling to South Texas to fish in the famed waters around Rockport often involves hot and windy conditions.