I talk about bay fishing whenever I can. All of my work colleagues can attest to that. Throughout the years, I have introduced a number of them to the joys of bay fishing, including Kris. I consider it a pay-it-forward mentality as it was another colleague who introduced me to the sport 8 or 9 years ago.

Just this past week, I’ve had a number of coworkers ask me about bay fishing. Where to go? To fish with a guide or not? I always tell them the same thing. Head to POC and contact a guide named John Fivecoat. I haven’t fished with another guide in all my years, nor would I want to. It’s not that I don’t think that other guides are as good as Fivecoat. I’ve had some mediocre outings with him. I’m just partial to him for giving the best fishing day of my life.

I’ll try to be brief with the rest of this post and just share the pictures with a few comments. It was my second trip with Fivecoat. Henry and I joined another friend, Brad Cook, for a day of fishing. In typical fashion, we put our fair share of beer away the night before. Nevertheless, we met Fivecoat at Froggies Bait Dock at 6 am. Given our state of mind, I think we need to start calling it “Groggies”. Like my first trip with Fivecoat, we went straight up the Powderhorn Ranch shoreline to start with some wade fishing. 

We made a killing! We had 37 trout before 11am. My first limit. The fishing had slowed, so Fivecoat asked us if we wanted to go find a couple more trout or if we’d rather catch some bull reds. We all chose the big sows. We went out to the POC jetties and anchored up. After a spectacular morning, we all popped open a beer while Fivecoat rigged up the boat rods. It wasn’t long after getting the first one in the water, that the thing bent down to touch the surface of the water. Brad jumped on it. 

Nice bull red! Brad felt he hadn’t posed properly in the pic, so he made a slight adjustment for another. Can you see the difference?

Yes… he hiked up a sleeve to get the guns in there. That’s Brad. Henry jumped on the next and pulled in a nice one too. It was a hair smaller than Brad’s tagged fish, so he threw it back.

I got the next one, which was perhaps the prettiest red you’ll ever see. It edged Brad’s out in length, so I kept it. Sorry, no action pics are available. My cohorts were too busy drinking beer. You’ll see it soon. It wasn’t long before Henry was back on the crank. He pulled in the bigun’.

When all was saind and done, we had 37 trout and each tagged a bull red. One helluva day. Here are a few pics at the trip’s end. 

Well, that’s the day I got hooked. I haven’t had another like it, but I’m hopeful that one will come along soon.