Spotty at best, they said. One or two trout here and there. Worse, the tide was falling and the north wind promised that it would fall further than expected. Similar recent cold blasts had either put the fish off their feed or run them out. JR speculated that what fish were still in Aucilla were simply too cold and lethargic to feed.

Redfish feed well in cold weather; find them and they'll hit most any lure.

When anglers did see them now, the fish seemed more interested in finding shallow sunny water where they could get warm. Old-timers used to say that the best time to catch seatrout was when the weather was cold enough to freeze the bilge water in your boat.

Once we were well past the river fishermen, we pulled on earmuff hearing protectors and hunkered down into our layered jackets. JR fired up the afterburner, and we roared off at face-numbing speed toward the mouth of the Aucilla River.

Well before reaching the Gulf we slued around a corner and took a shortcut westward along what looked like a narrow manmade canal. Considering the chill factor, the experience was exhilarating rather than painful. Thankfully, our sunglasses kept our eyes from turning into ice cubes.

Sometime later we skimmed across the almost dry Sulfur Creek area opening into the backcountry. Beyond it we skidded over sandbars into serpentine Oyster Creek, heading north. Sometime later we shot out of it into the mud-and-rock flood plain of the wide-open Pinhook River country.

JR’s airboat is large enough to carry four or five people in nicely padded, two-tier seats. The Freedom Craft hull with stainless steel motor safety screen was fabricated in Cross City. The other components were purchased at Hoffmans in Inverness. Two of JR’s friends put it together for him. The boat has a 220-horse ground power unit, a 6-cylinder Continental with a four-bladed warp-drive prop for quieter running. A sheet of polymer was added to the hull bottom to make it slide easier and to protect the hull from rock and oyster bar damage. The high-rise seats gave us a poling platform view of everything. Cooler and tackle boxes were stowed below the platform. Fishing rods stood upright along the sides. JR carried a 10-foot-long, 4-inch-diameter green bamboo pole to help pry the boat off steep banks or sandbars.

At top speed we flew across the flats in two or three inches of water, then picked up a swatch cut by the main Pinhook Creek artery only inches deeper than the surrounding flats.

Carefully JR worked us up the thin creek. Some distance in, the stream became a winding, dark brown passage of water punctuated with deep holes flanked by golden sandbars. As we hurried along this waterway, no fish flushed. Had the cold run them all out?

When JR found what he was searching for he swerved the boat’s nose onto a mud bank beside a deep, muddy waterhole. While we rigged rods, he shot out a shrimp-tipped jig and caught the first fish—a sheepshead. If the roar of our approach bothered the fish, this one was too hungry to care.

Doug stepped off and walked up the bar a ways and cast. Then he, too, was into a fish. Another sheepie. Then I was into them. Usually we all had a fish on at the same time. Before long we had caught and released all we cared to handle.

“Thought maybe there’d be more than sheepshead in here,” said JR. “Let’s go see if we can find some reds.”

On with the earmuffs. JR powered up, pivoted the boat and we flew again, snaking around dry sandbars that would have stopped us on a dime. After some adroit wiggling and grinding over dry spots, we settled into another deep hole.