Awesome Everglades Adventure w Capt Justin

I'll be in Miami all of next week for our company offsite, and decided to bookend the trip by staying the leading and trailing weekends.  Today, sort of last minute, I was calling around to see who could take me out, just going down the organic search results on Google Pg.1.  At ~1100 hrs, I came upon Capt. Justin Nguyen (no relation) who said LFG catch some fish.  And quicker than you can say "Audi recall," we had a 4 hour trip spec'd out, deposit money venmo'd, and a rally point chosen.  I packed up my hotel room, and headed west to BJ's Bait and Tackle on the edge of the Glades.

The whole trip was so fun.  Not 5 mins from the launch, we rounded a turn and saw one of Capt's guide buddies had his client hooked up on a good peacock under the interstate overpass.  My HR got jacked watching him land a chunky 4 pounder.  We smoothly steamed the flatbottom boat onward for another 15 minutes until we came upon a similar overpass. 

Capt baited me up with a shiner, I tossed to the weedline, and BAM - swing and a miss.  Few more times I whiff'd.  Seems I'm so used to the rockfish hookset motion of jerking the rod up.  But in this style of boat based bass fishing, the bite is only at 5-8 feet of depth, and the fish darts sideways, so the hookset also must go in the opposite sideways direction, with rod pointed down to take up the slack.  Capt kept saying, "stay low, down and dirty."  Missed an ez 10 bites from high sticking, so frustrating. 

Eventually, I was able to do the low sweep and ended up bagging just under 20, biggest was a 19" sat shallow on a bed.  Skipper had me sight fish that one for darn near 20 minutes.  Really had to work for it, must have flipped a shiner on it at least 15 times before I finally got a winning hookset.  Then, its buddy came out to play, and I picked that one up also.  I had really wanted to give up and just move on, but Capt was relentless, insisted that I MUST catch that one - he was right, turned out to be my jackpot.  The day ended in a flurry of really aggressive bass at the same spot where we saw the guy pick up the chunker at the beginning of the trip.

Another highlight was having a gator follow us around for an hour.  Reptilian equivalent of pacific furbags.

The glades is an amazing place.  Full of beauty, danger, and recreation.  We experienced every weather phenomenon but snow - I'm talking suuper bright sun and dead calm, to lightning stores with squall rain that felt like airsoft pellets to the face.  I'm really thankful I was able to check this one off and highly recommend it.

Here's Capt Justin's webpage.  Ton of good info.  He even has his own signature line of gear.  https://castalineflycharters.com/

Sizzle Reel on IG

Looks like fun. I fished the Miami canals for some various small cichlids as a teenager once. Peacock bass are on my bucket list.