I don’t have a whole lot of fishing to report over the last month. Mainly due to a major boat renovation on the “Time To Fly”. It’s been twelve years since I bought the boat, and beating the hell out of it has taken it’s toll. The fact that it’s been driven like a jet ski for that amount of time and it hasn’t split in half and gone to the bottom is somewhat amazing. And though nothing had reach structural failure, the transom was on it’s way out, the gas tank needed attention and all the wiring and plumbing needed replacing. It took two days to dismantle the boat( removed console, motor, control cables and about three hundred screws and rivets) far enough to lift the deck off with the help of a forklift, prybars and chisels. Another two days to get the gas tank out, buffed down to clean metal and encased in fiberglass. Two days of tearing, cutting, grinding and scraping to get the old transom out. Three days to shape the replacement pieces for the transom,( the transom was in a total of three, 2pc interlocking sections, plus four integrated stringers) and two more days to fiberglass the whole thing together. A couple of days to replace the wires and plumbing. A day to repair the joint where the deck and hull were joined and do various other little things to have it ready to go back together. We lifted the deck back onto the hull thirteen days after pulling it apart. Quite a little backyard project. About five days into it I was wondering if I had bitten off more than I knew how to chew. I had never attempted anything quite this extreme in a rebuild and needless to say, my learning curve was just about vertical. But everything went back together fine and the maiden voyage came off without anything falling off and going to the bottom. And the next trip was a offshore run through about four foot waves which confirmed nothing was going to fail anytime soon. I think this will take me another twelve years down the line. Maybe by then there will be a boat on the market that can compare to the Wahoo, otherwise, I’ll be doing it all over again. Now, to the fishing. The mullet run/ bait migration has started. Pods of finger mullet,(little guys, they’re the first to come through) have appeared in the intracoastal and just like clockwork, jacks, snook, tarpon, sharks, cudas and ladyfish are blasting the crap out of them. My customers on Saturday afternoon, (probably the only worse time to fish inside here being Sunday afternoon due to boat traffic) boated probably thirty ladyfish, missed at least twice that, several nice jacks and one shark. Also missed several snook and I think at least one tarpon. I haven’t been offshore, but I’ve gotten reports of dolphin, wahoo and tuna being caught. I don’t have a lot of trips on the books for the next month or so, a typically slow time of year despite the good fishing. But after the boat project and the busy winter, spring and summer, I plan on treating myself to some fishing. I’ll keep you all posted on the results.