Redhot Snook bite
Capt. Jim Hobales
July 28, 2008
Flamingo - Saltwater Fishing Report
072608
Today I fished the Friendly Flamingo Tournament with my my buddy Paul, this tournament is made up of teams that fish Everglades National Park religiously. The teams are all serious and put a lot of time into this, just for bragging rights. The first thing in the morning we picked up a item which has to be in the photo of a caught fish, it was a banana! I am very superstitious about bananas on my boat, things happen that don't normally happen. I am not the only one who feels this way and guys did all sorts of things to reverse the spell of the banana from going back ward and reversing there path to peeing on the banana to kill the curse.
Our first stop was for Tarpon they were not as thick as I I had hoped. We fished the area and caught small Snook after Snook and hooked 7 Tarpon only to have them jump off, even when they were hooked solid. There were others that struck the lures but hit it short. I believe this was due to the banana, normally I catch a lot of these small fish.
We had to go to our Snook spot before it got to late, Paul had a monster fish hit his Rapala Skitterwalk but completely miss it,leaving a 6 foot hole in the water. The banana effect again. He had an idea to get rid of the jinx and I really think it worked,one of the above mentioned methods. On our next spot we caught 7 Snook between 32 and 34 inches, jinx at least mentally gone. There were a couple very large ones in there that came up with the hooked Snook hitting it like it was trying to eat it, possible it's a mating partner.
We moved on hitting all our spots looking for a Redfish and hopeful a by-catch of a Trout, the Snook just wore us out but no Redfish. We caught Jacks, Ladyfish and big Mangrove Snappers in all the spots we hoped there would be Redfish. We ran to Ponce De Leon Bay to a Tarpon hole but they were not there, we ended up south of Shark River where Paul caught a 22 inch Redfish. We were out of time and had to get back with a couple stops on the way hopefully for a Trout, Trout usually are caught while fishing for other species but not on this day.
We made our way back to the ramp and then to Gustos in Homestead to turn in our points. We did not have many points only 56 inches but we caught 45 Snook and all the other action just made for an incredible day. This was done using lures, we cast Rapalas, Gulps, and a the new Hollow belly Power bait by Berkley. The winners had a great day with 117 inches and we left with the 2nd largest Snook award. With all the great fishing the guys experienced all anyone was talking about was the bananas!
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