Fishing Report for Pine Island Sound to Sarasota Bay, Florida

Capt. Butch Rickey
July 12, 2002
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report

FISHING REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING 7/13/2002

by

Capt. Butch Rickey

I have four trips to report on this week. It was a pretty good week considering the weather. Here’s how it went.

Sunday was my first outing with Kathy Gomez of Miami, and her puppy Spook. She had to bring the puppy, which is a 3 year old Newfoundland of about 170 pounds, as she had no one that could take care of him. Newfy’s normally carry a coat of 12 inches of hair, and were bred to work in the waters off Newfoundland. They don’t do well in the Florida summer heat, even when clipped. Kathy and I both learned something about taking dogs on flats boats.

My Talon is a boat designed with one thing in mind; flats fishing. It sits low to the water and is made to go fast and skinny, and is a tremendously stable and roomy fishing platform. But, it has no shade! I think Kathy spent most of her time looking after Spook trying to make sure he didn’t expire from sunstroke.

We had fun, though. We got great looking bait at Chino, and I thought that maybe the big bait was back for good. We set out looking for redfish around North Captiva, but found none. We headed on out to the beach of Cayo Costa and caught a few snook. When that slowed we headed back inside looking for reds again, and did manage to find some that would eat not long before the tide stopped. I think we caught about half dozen reds, one trout, and half dozen snook for the morning, giving us the Slam, and Kathy plenty of fish to take home.

It was a fun day, but having a 170 pound dog in a flats boat is like having a 170 two year old baby in a flats boat. It just ain’t a good thing. They’re not smart enough to know when they’re in the way, they slobber and drool all over everything, and my boat looked like it had grown a light coat of black hair by day’s end. Spook needs a nice trawler with air conditioning.

Monday was my second trip with Dirk Steinhoff and his son Carl, over from Germany on vacation. We did a teaching trip last year about this time. This year we wanted to go catch some fish. We had as good a tide as we get this time of year, so I was hopeful that we could generate some action.

After catching small shiners and pinfish at Chino, we headed to a spot that I normally fish only in the fall, winter, and early spring. Why? The wind was from the east, and the tide was fairly low, and I thought there ought to be some fish there. I was thinking snook and trout. But, when we got there and began wetting lines, I was surprised to find that we had redfish in the hole. The first fish was a snook, and after that several reds of different sizes. Carl got a very nice one at the top of the slot, and he was sure proud of that fish. I think it was his biggest fish.

Once the action slowed there, we headed out looking for snook and more reds. We found snook, and caught them on very small shiners suspended under popping corks. As the tide slowed, the weather brewed and began to look threatening, and we headed for home. It had been a good day. Along the way, I showed Dirk a couple of places he can fish with his big boat.

Wednesday I was invited to join my old friend Lew Joseph for a morning of tarpon fishing. I hadn’t been out with Lew in quite a spell, and hadn’t been tarpon fishing for fun in a long time, either, so I was looking forward to a day with Lew in the Lady G.

But, it seemed Mother Nature had other ideas. It was threatening rain when I met Lew at Sanibel Harbor at nine o’clock that morning. We loaded up and headed to the Sanibel Causeway looking for bait, but never marked the first think on Lew’s color fish finder. Lew decided to head back to the marina to get shrimp to use for catching bait, when his motor began acting up. It was missing badly off and on, and when it was missing the tachometer was reading zero. I had had this happen to me years ago, and had a bad tachometer that was shorting out the ignition. We limped back to the marina where Lew got one of the techs to take a look. He quickly found a cracked fuel pump and replaced it. He was ready to send us on our way, when I reminded him that we had a problem that was causing the tach to read zero!!

After some troubleshooting he determined there was something wrong with Lew’s tach, and recommended a replacement. They went for a test ride, and it seems that during the test ride, the problem, probably water in the plug, cured itself. We were ready to go fishing except that it was now raining. Lew and I decided to sit it out.

Once it quit drizzling, we headed up the river to catch bait. It took a while, but was fun. Even catching little fish on little poles is fun. Once we had bait we headed out into the Sound in search of the Silver King. Lew quickly found the bottom he was looking for and we anchored up. Shortly afterward, a boat about 300 yards off our stern hooked up with a big tarpon, and after half hour or so, boated it. I managed to get some pictures of it, but even fully zoomed, they are hard to make out.

We put three baits out. Two on the bottom, and one live suspended below a cork. It wasn’t too long before we had our first strike. The clicker on Lew’s ABU reel began clicking, and Lew dove for the pole. The majestic fish went airborne in a beautiful leap for the sky, and threw the hook. It was over.

After rebaiting, it wasn’t too long before the same rod went off again. Lew went for the pole again, and as he tried to come tight to the fish, it leaped over our heads right in front of us, not twenty feet from the boat. As it did, it made the strangest noise I’ve ever heard, kind of like a football player gasping for breath as he hits an opponent. It was a beautiful sight, right before our eyes, almost close enough to touch. She threw the hook again.

After the third hit and miss, all on the same rod, Lew said he wanted me to take the next one and see if I could get hooked up. The fourth take came, but before I could even get to the rod, the big tarpon had launched herself skyward and thrown the hook. I never got the rod out of the rod holder.

It was then I decided to tell Lew about my tarpon fishing experience with this style of fishing. Tarpon make great head shaking leaps. This presents a serious problem when you’re using something like a lead headed jig or a large sinker to get the bait down to the fish. That weight becomes your worst enemy once the tarpon is airborne and shaking it’s head. The weight of the flying lead tends to dislodge the hook from the tarpon’s mouth. Thus, the old boys in Louisiana years ago invented the Coon Pop, which was a break-away jig, that would sling itself free when the tarpon made it’s first jump and shook it’s head. In the years gone by that I fished Boca Grande Pass, we always used break-away weights, so that when the fish jumped, the weight would be thrown, instead of the hook. I told Lew what we needed to change the rigs from the slide sinkers we were using, and we quickly changed everything. It involves simply using a piece of copper rigging wire to fix the weight to the line. Of course, after we changed all the rigs, we never got another hit!!

That was OK! We had had a ball. Four tarpon jumped is a good day any way you cut it, and Lew had put us in the fish. None of the other boats around us, save for the boat that caught the one fish, even jumped a fish.

The last trip of the week on Thursday was a fiasco, and a great trip, all at the same time. My customer was Eric Muniz, Dj X, of Sebring, who I had taken out as a part of Stan Priest’s party a couple of weeks earlier. We had a great trip, then.

Friday morning dawned dark, dreary, and rainy by the time I got to the ramp. There was no Dj. I waited until almost 7 o’clock before the phone rang. It was Dj wondering where I was. I told him I was at the ramp. He said he was at the ramp. I said he couldn’t be. Well, after some discussion I realized he was at the Waterfront Restaurant, where I had picked up Stan and his party previously. Dj had assumed that was the standard pick up spot, and had gone there. I had not made the mental connection to realize he wouldn’t know to come to the ramp.

I told Dj I’d be there ASAP, jumped out of my van, turned to go to the boat, and looked straight into a wall of water coming across the sound from his direction. Man, it was raining. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. For the next two hours Dj and I talked on the cellphones. This trip was a birthday present for his older brother Al, and they didn’t have an alternate day. We had to try to make this day work. I told Dj I’d hang and wait as long as they would. So we did.

At nine o’clock, there appeared to be break enough in the weather for me to attempt to get to the Waterfront in St. James City. It’s about 6 miles from the ramp, due west. I took off. I think Dj was surprised to see me pull up to the dock. I went inside and asked JD to que up the weather channel. JD, owner and all round super guy, said he thought the weather would hold for the rest of the day. I explained to Dj that once we left the dock, it was a trip, whether we fished two hours or six. The boys really wanted to make a go of it, and decided we’d take our chances. It was a good call.

We went straight to Chino to get bait. I figured if the weather held long enough to do that, we were probably home free. It did. We headed to where I had found the big schools of redfish the previous week. Dj had read of catching them on Top Pups, and wanted to try that. We weren’t able to find any fish pushing, but I believe there were reds there. They weren’t eating.

So, we headed to another great piece of redfish territory near where I had taken him on the previous trip. I poled us into position and anchored and threw some baits. We put out shiners and small pins under corks, and almost immediately we were into action. The reds were right where I told Dj they should be.

For the next several hours we had an unadulterated blast. Both Dj and Al missed some fish, I think about 8 total, and we broke off several, but they still managed to boat somewhere between 15 and 20 best guess. I figure we tangled with around 30 redfish before the tide quit running.

We kept our legal limit, as Dj had proclaimed he’d never eaten as good a fish as the last redfish he took home and prepared the way I told him to. We headed to the Waterfront around two o’clock, had a great lunch, good conversation, and a good time. We took a few pictures, bled out the fish, and they took off for home, happy as clams. I headed for the ramp happy that I was able to put them into the fish once again.

At the Sugar Shack, I gave the boat a good cleaning. Would you believe I’m still finding black hair in that boat??!!

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