The first week of October brought with it the first winter type front with enough steam to punch on through Florida. It brought some relief from the summer heat, and lots of wind.

The first trip was in Pine Island Sound, looking to see if the front was enough to drive the snook out of their summer haunts. Although bait was plentiful, redfish were scarce, and snook were not willing to cooperate. We only managed one 32" redfish, and 5 snook to 27". So, I fell back on the trout action and found over 30 in another pothole. The holes also gave up a founder, 2 ladyfish, and 5 jacks.

The following day I had a trip with Kevin Grover of Associated Network Solutions, Inc., in St. Petersburg, who was entertaining a couple of his top clients. We had a hard northeast wind blowing at 20 mph which allowed us to get outside and look for snook. Although we didn't find many snook on the beach, we were shocked at what we did find. Tarpon! Tarpon! Tarpon! They were in tight on the beach literally by the thousands. It was the single biggest aggregation of tarpon I've ever seen, including Boca Grande Pass. We were equipped with 8 pound spinning tackle and live shiners. The boys spent several hours throwing shiners at the rolling tarpon, but they just weren't interested. There was so much bait present, that all they had to do to feed was swim with their large bucket-mouths open, and that they did. It was quite a show, and probably just as well they didn't hit on such light tackle.

We moved inside in search of snook, and found them feeding actively. Again, there was so much bait present that many of the snook would strike our shiners out of instinct as if only to kill it. They did kill many of our baits, but we did manage to catch over 30 snook as big as 28". We also got 5 small grouper, a ladyfish, and 2 jacks in the same area. After the bite stopped, we went across the Sound and hit one of the better trout holes, and again scored over 30 trout up to 20". We capped the trout off with one redfish right at the 27" limit. Kevin and his guys were quite happy with a day of over 60 fish.

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