Incredible Redfishing!
Capt. Butch Rickey
May 14, 2012
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report
Week ending 3/31/12
I had three trips scheduled, and the final FMNP course and graduation on Friday. High wind did claim another trip.
First up on Monday was Michael Saracione, of Oregon City, Oregon. We launched from Castaways around 10:00 AM, and made the run out to the flats. As we approached our target area, neither of us had any idea just how good the fishing was about to be. I'd caught thousands of redfish there over several decades, but most of that was with live and cut bait. Not lures.
We began with some trout fishing early on the tide, and managed a few nice trout to 18 inches, along with 4 flounder, and a small redfish. By the time we'd done that, the tide had moved sufficiently to have the redfish about ready to bite on the flats. We made our move to one of my favorite flats and went to work with gold spoons and red and gold DOA CAL swimming shad jigs. We were on a hot redfish bite from the get-go! We caught fish after fish, every one from 24 to 27.5 inches long! We really could do no wrong. It was a great morning with great weather, and the reds just ate like crazy. When it was all over, Mike and I had caught 28 redfish, and lost more than I care to mention. All on artificials! What a day!
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Tuesday, my friend Kevin Duffy was back down from up north for his second trip with me. We fished last June and had a great time. I'd love to say we went out and wore out the redfish like we had the previous day with Michael, but we didn't. We DID have a good day, though, with redfish and snook. We did have one factor though, we didn't have the day before. There was seaweed floating everywhere we went that made it hard to fish.
We started off with potholes early. It wasn't a great tide for pothole fishing, but there wasn't enough water for much of anything else. WE managed 1 redfish and 1 trout before the potholes were no longer viable.
We moved to the flats and went to work. Kevin and I combined for 10 redfish before it slowed down at our first spot. We turned our attention to snook in another area, and got 3 snook to 26 inches and 1 redfish there. At the last stop of the day Kevin managed 1 more snook. We hadn't set the world on fire, but we had put up a respectable total of 12 redfish and 4 snook. I'm sure that if we could have kept our baits clean for more than a couple of cranks of the reel handles we could have caught more. As it was we had a great time, and Kevin is a serious, but laid back angler, and fun to be with.
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Wind forecast to blow to 28 mph was enough to keep my old friend Martin Wenick off the water once again. That was our last shot at getting another trip in while he was here. We'll have to try to catch up next year.
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Friday, I had the last of my Florida Master Naturalist, Coastal Module classes and graduation. It was a very good course taught by great instructors Joy Hazel and Bryan Fleuch. We're trying to get a date when the three of us can go catch some redfish and snook. I hope we can do that before it gets too hot.
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