Fishing Report for Pine Island Sound to Sarasota Bay, Florida

Capt. Butch Rickey
June 15, 2002
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report

REPORT FOR WEEK ENDING 6/15/2002 by Capt. Butch Rickey

The week started with my best friend Capt. Butch Boteler and I taking our mutual best friend Lee Dugger, his wife Tina, and kids Matthew and Amanda out for a morning on the water, including a little fishing, and some shelling on Cayo Costa. Butch took Lee and Matthew, who were going to do some fishing, and stopped and caught bait, while Tina and Amanda and I headed to the beaches of Cayo Costa. That beach offers some of the best shelling to be had anywhere, especially in this area. The beaches of Sanibel, Captiva, and even North Captiva are well picked over by the tourists, but to my to my knowledge there are no tour boats dropping people on the sand to look for shells on Cayo.

This time of year there are plenty of snook in the surf, and with the water as clear as glass they were easy to see. So, I occupied my time pitching jigs of different varieties at the snook until I found something they would eat; the Crystal Minnow. I had lots of follows using different Bass Assassin products, but didn't catch a fish until I tied on the Minnow. Then I caught a total of three before I ran out of plastic bodies. Butch, Lee, and Matt showed up later and caught some from the anchored boat on shiners. If you haven't tried catching the snook in the surf from the shore, you're missing a real treat. It's a blast. This fishery should be good until through September near the passes.

I was really looking forward to Tuesday's trip with Richie and Tracey Lathrom, newlyweds from Springfield, Missouri, here on there honeymoon. Tracey told me that Richie had been talking about this fishing trip with me until she was tired of hearing about it. Richie told me he had always wanted to come and fish here for our snook and reds, and this was a dream come true. I hoped I could live up to his expectations!

We caught bait at Picnic Island without too much trouble. A cormorant showed up and began terrorizing the bait, and it disappeared in a flash. Fortunately, we had plenty of bait for a morning of fishing as long as I didn't have to do too much chumming, as the cormorant refused to leave. So, we did.

We shot blanks at the first stop. The tide was laying still, which certainly didn't help our cause, so in ten minutes we were off to the second stop of the day. We were at a mangrove island in the north end of the Sound. With the wind from the east, I just worked my way down the key fishing the holes, all of which can be very good. We struck out on the first two spots, but on the third, we struck redfish gold. It was full of nice redfish, and we should have caught more than we did, but we put around 8 in the boat. Richie was thrilled with the way they fought. Tracey also lost a nice snook there, and I think Richie lost a couple of fish, too.

Once that action slowed, we fished a couple more spots heading west, then headed across the Sound. I had asked Tracey if she would like to mix some shelling in with the fishing since she said she wasn't that big a fishergal, but kind of along for the ride. She said she'd love to, and I knew I could let her off on the beach and Richie and I could catch plenty of snook just a short distance away. So, once we had dropped Tracey, Rich and I anchored a short distance away, with Tracey in easy shouting distance, and commenced to catch snook. Richie had a blast. His best was right at 7 pounds, and I'd guess we caught around 15 before the mid-day heating shut things down.

By then, we were all about shut down from the heat and hunger, and I headed to the Waterfront Restaurant on Pine Island, with the promise they were about to eat the best food in the area. As always, the great food, great service, and great prices lived up to my promise. It was the perfect end to a perfect day.

Thursday morning dawned with rain and thunder in the air. After being stood up the on Wednesday, I now feared being rained out. Those fears turned into fear of being once again stood up as my meeting time of 6 AM with Sid Riddick came and went. But, as the rain subsided, Sid showed up at around 6:45, and explained that they had flown in late, and neither he nor his brother-in-law Mac had heard their alarms. I could tell they were good guys, and we'd have a fun day.

We took off for Picnic Island in search of bait. Sid artfully put the chum out, and the shiners came quickly, but after catching less than enough to fish the morning with, they disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a hatch of new tiny shiners. I pulled the Power Pole and we headed for Chino Island. There we quickly had beautiful bait in the boat and were ready to go fishing.

I headed north into the Sound to the same area I had gotten into the redfish two days before. Reds are creatures of habit, and I fully expected to find them right there again. What we found was water so full of floating turtlegrass that we literally couldn't fish. We didn't stay long, and we were off to the beaches of Cayo Costa. While in route, the winds changed, and came around to the south because of all the storm cells around, kicking up the gulf. We fished one spot, which has been full of snook, and the boys caught 7 or 8 snook. Sid got one nice fish of around 6 - 7 pounds. But, the water was bumpy, and fishing was not comfortable. Also, the bite stopped, and sans action, it's not worth getting beaten up out there, so I headed back inside.

At the first stop Sid laid into another really nice snook, and put her into the boat. But there wasn't much else happening, so I decided to move to another series of holes not far away. I was looking mainly for reds, but snook also inhabit these particular spots. After fishing several spots, we decided that since it was so bloody hot, around noon, and we weren't likely to find anything else that would eat a bait, we would go to the Waterfront and have lunch ourselves. I fired up the Yamaha after getting the boat ready for the ride, and began idling off the flats. As I idled, I thought about all the many, many redfish I'd caught on that flat in years gone by, and decided to get up on the bow and watch the water as we left. I walked to the front of the Talon, stepped up on to the bow, and looked down into the water, and saw big redfish scooting everywhere. I couldn't believe my eyes. I turned and shouted to Sid and Mack to kill the motor and hit the Power Pole switch, which they did pretty quickly, wondering what was going on. I told them we were on redfish, and lots of them, and began throwing shiners to try to hold the fish there with us. After all, we had driven right into the middle of them with our big motor.

Once we got the boat anchored, some chum in the water, and our wits about us, we realized that our chum was being blasted by the reds. It only took a minute after casting live shiners as far as we could to have reds on. In all the adrenaline laced excitement, the boys missed a number of fish, but they also caught some beautiful fish. The reds were even waking up on spoons pulled through the water, and baits being retrieved. I guess they caught about eight of them before the action subsided, and we once again decided to head to the Waterfront. But, the reds had provided the perfect end to the fishing day.

Unfortunately, the batteries on my digital camera went south in the middle of the redfish bite, and my backup batteries turned out to be no good. I feared my camera might have gone south, as well. I'm reasonably sure that one of those reds would have taken "fish of the week" honors, but absent the proof, Sid still gets the honors for either one of his snook.

I woke up Friday morning at 4 AM, and immediately checked the radar on the computer. It didn't look very good. Lots of weather to our south. When I left to hook up the Talon, I was treated to lots of bright lightning to the south. I wondered what the day might bring weather-wise. My customer was Rick Grossman and his friend Keith Woodward, both now residing in Georgia. I hadn't seen Rick in some five years, and was really looking forward to fishing with him again.

We headed straight to Chino Island for bait, bypassing Picnic Island, where bait has gotten progressively tougher and smaller. At Chino, we were quickly baited up, and the first boat to leave. The wind was out of the west, which is very unusual for this time of year first thing in the morning. It meant two things, we wouldn't be able to get outside to fish for snook, and it opened up some possible spots on the inside that I wouldn't normally be fishing on a summer morning.

The first spot we hit was full of floating turtlegrass, and with the storm clouds all over, we couldn't see the hole well enough to cast to the proper place. We moved on. I took off headed north, but decided the tide was high enough due to the west wind to have the redfish in place where I had found them the day before. I headed west.

It was so dark and overcast I couldn't see squat! But, I finally managed to find the right patch of flats and get the boat situated. I began chumming with live and cut bait, and we put out a cut bait, a freelined live bait, and two baits under Texas floats. Rick and Keith missed several good solid strikes before finally hooking the first fish. We proved the fish were there, but couldn't get them to really turn on. They missed probably half dozen hits, and boated about the same number of reds and one snook before the big rains came in off the gulf. We decided to run to the Green Flash on Captiva for cover instead of staying on the flat. I didn't trust the weather not to begin spewing lightning, given the weather earlier in the morning was full of electricity.

Once the immediate weather threat seemed to be past, we headed back to the flat. It was now blowing like hell from the southwest, and the water was really chopped up. We did manage a few more good hits, but didn't boat any more reds that I recall. We decided to take ourselves snook fishing closer to the ramp in case the weather really got ugly. I stopped at one of my favorite places along the way, but we went hitless. At our first destination it was so bouncy and windy that I couldn't get the anchor to hold. I was reminded of why I love the Power Pole so much, but it was too deep for that here. We blew the hole when the anchor let go. I moved to another good hole not far away, and there we got into fish. I had to put all the scope on the rode that I had to get the anchor to hold, but it did, and we managed to catch maybe half dozen snook. Keith really got frustrated with himself because nearly every bait that he cast out came back with snook bites on it, and he couldn't feel most of them, or react quickly enough when he did. In the end I assured him that it wasn't him, but the snook were doing what I call the "hit and run" or "pop and drop", where they strike the bait and kill it, but don't eat it. They're all but impossible to hook when they're doing that routine.

The boys were happy, though, because they had gotten to catch some of our two best species, and had a limit of redfish to cook up for Fathers' Day.

I'll be taking most of next week off for both mini-vacation and business. I have a court date with Smith Marine, friends coming into town, and so on, but will fish Thursday and Friday. Hopefully, the weather will be settled and the fish biting.

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