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Hello, Friends! It's time for a short fishing report! I finally got on the water Saturday with my long time friend Lee Dugger, who popped in unexpectedly from Orlando. We used the opportunity to get out and do some assessing of the fishing situation, and the news was good. Our purpose was not to see how many fish we could catch, but rather to check different spots and see if there were fish present.
We decided to begin with bait at Picnic Island, which is barely recognizable since Charley. The tide was still running out hard, and there was so much current we had to move farther in on the flat to catch bait. It took a while, but eventually we did get plenty of pinfish, some large shiners, and some new hatch shiners, too.
We headed up into the new Sound with the tide at about a 1.4 ft. level, and just beginning to flood the flats. The first stop was to investigate a lot of large boils we saw in the water as we passed the site of what used to be Kiesel's Shack. We never did figure out what it was. We moved on to a favorite spot of mine, not quite sure what to expect. We put out some cut baits for redfish, and small live pinfish for redfish or snook. Lee had a couple of snook take his pinfish/float rig, and I had several hits from nice redfish. I, however, was apparently a bit too anxious after being off the water so long, and missed the strikes. Well, one of them was a cutoff in the sharp bottom.
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We moved on to a favorite snook hole and repeated the scenario. We caught a couple of snook fairly quickly, and moved on. We weren't intent on spending much time in any particular place, as we wanted to establish presence, and have some time to let Lee do some sightseeing of the damage to Captiva and North Captiva.
At the next stop we again had snook action, and Lee boated a beautiful 10 pound redfish. She must have been hungry, as she hit like a ton of bricks and took the large circle hook way back in her throat. What we didn't realize while we were taking pictures was that she was bleeding profusely. We got her back into the water quickly, and worked on her for more than half an hour, but it was to no avail. She had lost too much blood, and ultimately, we left her for the porpoise. It broke my heart to watch that fish die.
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In short, we had action nearly everywhere we went, and the prospects are good for fishing. The fish seem to have settled back into their normal patterns since the storm. After some sightseeing, and one last stop which yielded a big stingray, we headed in. Lee was really cooking, and had forgotten to apply sunscreen. Not good! We had a large tarpon roll right in front of us as we were passing by Wulfert Keys, in about ten feet of water. We were tempted to go back and fish, but Lee's radiator was really boiling over.
I ran into several other guides who said they were also on the water for the first time. Seems everyone had a good day! I'm hearing around that things are going well with cleanup and repairs to motels, restaurants, and businesses, and I implore you to do two things. My own customer base has been wonderfully generous and supportive of me, and have participated in my Hurricane Fund to insure that we survive this period of no, or low income. To all of you, I am very thankful. If you are a reader of my reports, but have a guide that you enjoy fishing with, I ask you to consider doing for him what so many of my friends have done for me; namely to send him some deposits on future bookings. Also, if you already have a date set with your guide, try to keep it. If you'll do those two things to support the guide you fish with, you'll almost surely guarantee he will be here to fish with you when things are finally back to normal.
September bookings are still looking bleak, but there will at least be a few trips to write about along the way. So, beginning next week you should again see regular fishing reports hitting your mailbox. That is, of course, unless we get a double-whammy, and Frances hits Florida over the Labor Day weekend.
If you want to be able to continue to fish Florida waters please follow this link, "Manatee Zones: How You Can Help" and please take the time to become involved, even if you don't live in Florida. Let the politicians know WHY you come to Florida on vacation!
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