Fishing Report for Week Ending 5/24/97.
by Capt. Butch Rickey
Summer has returned with a vengeance. With the heat has come the evening thunderstorms and hot snook action. Snook are gathering in good numbers along the beaches of Sanibel and the Captiva Isles to spawn, and they will be there until September, maybe into October, depending on the weather. Most of the fish are full of roe, and they all have a bad attitude. Even the smaller fish are very scrappy. My clients often can't believe that a 3 or 4 pound fish can raise so much cane. But, they do!
There were some great catches aboard "the BarHopp'R" this week. Sunday, John Payne, of Lake Placid, along with his good friend Pete McDevitt, caught and released about 60 of the linesider snook. They had a blast!
Joyce Rehr, a 5-time IGFA world record holder from Sanibel Island, who usually stalks her prey on fly, decided to try the light spin tackle, live bait fun with me. Even though we lost lots of fish in the barnacle infested cover, we still boated 27 snook. I think that's a bit more action that Joyce is accustomed to seeing on the flyrod.
And Steve Bronstein, a customer home builder from Lutz, Florida, and aspiring fly fisherman, also tried his luck against the snook with the long rod, but never managed to trick one of the speedsters. But while he was resting his caster's arm he picked up the spinner and threw some shiners at them, and caught around 20 snook. He also lost his share to the cover. Steve can't wait to come back and try his luck on fly again when it's not a holiday weekend with two tournaments going on!
The outlook for the coming week is great. It may take the fish a day to settle down after being run over so much over Memorial Day, but we will soon be routinely catching 60+ snook a morning.
Tarpon action off the beaches has remained slow this year. Unfortunately, with each passing year, the fishing seems to get a little worse. This is partly attributable to the fact that we now have a number of guides from the Homosassa area and the east coast migrating here for the tarpon season, and there is simply more pressure on the fish.
Redfish are slow, and will probably remain so until late August when they start to prepare for their offshore spawn.
The big news this year is bait. There is more, and bigger bait now than I can ever remember. It's amazing. Most days last week I was able to catch 400 or so shiners with one or two throws of the net after just a little bit of chumming. I love it!
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