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I fished Sunday through Tuesday of this week, and headed out of town for a mini-vacation for the rest of the week. With all the red tide around, it seemed like a good time to take off.
Sunday was my first outing with Mike May, of Cape Coral, and his son Dave. I had been forced to cancel them on the previous Thursday because of weather. The weather on this Sunday was still and sticky. The high reached 91! I knew from talking to Mike, we were going to have a fun day.
After catching bait at Picnic Island, we went and took up residency on one of my favorite flats, in hopes of being able to get some redfish action going. I figured staking out a spot on a Sunday was probably a good plan, given all the traffic on the water. We chummed and moved, and chummed and moved, and in a couple of hours managed to catch 5 or 6 big redfish. It's really hard to catch those redfish in crystal clear, shallow water when there is no wind to put some ripple on the water. They get real spooky, and it's hard to get a bait in front of them without scaring them away.
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Monday, my good friend and long time customer Bob McGuire was back for the first of two days of fishing during two weeks. His brother-in-law, Bob, had joined him. They were here along with most of the family for his son's wedding. We headed to the flats off Keesel's shack, in hopes of finding cleaner bottom in which to catch bait. We had a nice, cooling southeast breeze gusting as high as 15. I hoped it would be a different day on the flats. We had plenty of beautiful bait in no time, and were off to chase the redfish.
What a difference a day and some wind make! It didn't take long at the first stop to get into the first reds. We caught a half dozen or so on shiners under Cajun floats. Wanting more action, we headed to a different area in search of snook. The first bait Bob threw into the hole was devoured by a monster of a snook. This was one of the biggest snook I've seen in a very long time, and I'm guessing it was over 4 feet long. I knew that if Bob didn't take control of the fish from the get-go, it would be all over quickly unless he had the good fortune to lip-hook her, and there's no way of knowing that until it's over. I was coaching as hard as I could coach, but Bob just couldn't get control of the fish. I had tightened the drag down so hard you could barely pull the Power Pro off the reel with your hand, yet the fish kept stripping line. Bob got the monster snook close to the boat twice, and we got a good look at her. She was huge! The second time she was almost within touching distance when the leader parted! We were both heartbroken as we watched the big snook leisurely swim away, but that's snooking. At least Bob had had the experience of nearly whipping a world class snook. She had given him her best, and this time it was good enough.
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The last trip of the week was on Tuesday with Bill Meyer, of Centerreach, New York, and his brother, Bob, who lives in Crystal River, Florida. We had a strong southeast wind of around 20 knots, and the high was to be 90. We also had the red tide blowing back into the bay on the southerly winds. Just what we needed. Seems we can't get rid of it. It's been around messing with our throats, sinuses, and the fishing since March.
Since bait had been great the day before at Keesel's, I decided to go there again. We chummed a few minutes, and were loaded to the gills in one throw of the TrueSpread net. We were ready to fish.
I headed to my favorite redfish flat, and quickly found large numbers of fish, al beit not on the part of the flat they usually visit. We set about catching some of them. I chummed with both live and fresh cut bait, and we put out offerings of both live shiners under Cajun floats, and cut pinfish and shiners. We had a descent bite, and missed some fish, but got 8 nice reds to 9 pounds to the boat. Once the redfish action slowed, we hit a number of other spots that always give up snook and redfish, but only managed to catch a couple of 4 pound speckled trout. Those are nice trout, though. It wasn't the stellar day I had hoped to produce for Bill on his first trip, but it wasn't bad considering the elements we were fighting. Bill and Bob were a lot of fun, and although we didn't get our Slam, we had a great time.
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Until then, tight lines.
Tight Lines!
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