Fishing Report for Pine Island Sound to Sarasota Bay, Florida

Capt. Butch Rickey
November 9, 2002
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report

REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING 11/9/2002

by

Capt. Butch Rickey

Awesome is the only word I can use to describe the fishing again this week, and it’s the word often used by my customers. All my folks caught plenty of nice snook and big trout, and redfishing was good, too.

My customer for Monday was Shannon Hartich, who is the lovely wife of Roland Hartich. Roland and Shannon have been my friends for several years, and come over from Germany. The story of how Shannon fished Monday is fun. They have a young son, Nicholas, and didn’t have someone to sit with him so they could both fish. So, they flipped a coin to see who would fish with me on Monday, and Shannon won, much to Roland’s chagrin! Shannon’s ambition since we first met is to catch a fish that would get her “Fish of the Week” on my website. I hoped this might be the day.

It was the new moon, and we had a great tide and great weather. I was expecting good things. We headed to Chino Island for bait, and were soon ready to fish. The first stop was for trout, jacks, ladyfish, and such, and although we caught fish, the action began slowly.

As the tide flooded the flats we made a move that proved to be the charm. We got into snook and redfish that were hungry, and Shannon had the time of her life catching those fish. She kept reminding me that Roland was going to be upset when he found out how well she’d done. By the time we were ready for lunch, Shannon had boated 13 nice redfish to 10 pounds, 9 nice snook, and a big trout of around 4 pounds. Her arms were sore. I told her I thought her 10 pound redfish would be tough to beat for “Fish of the Week” honors. As the week evolved it became apparent that I was right. Good job, Shannon.

Tuesday was my first trip with Dr. Dave Rallis, his beautiful wife MaryAnn, and her mother Josephine, from the Atlanta area. We left the dock at 8 AM, and headed straight to Chino for bait. Three throws and we were ready to go fishing.

We had a good winter low tide of -0.4 ft. Perfect pothole fishing. I headed to a large pothole I hadn’t fished since last spring. Man, was it full of fish. Every bait Dave, MaryAnn, and Jo casted was eaten by either a nice trout, a jack crevalle or a ladyfish. The action was too fast to try to keep accurate count, but by the time we decided to turn our attention to snook, the trio had caught a good 30 trout, several ladyfish, and bunches of jacks.

The first snook hole only yielded us one snook. We didn’t stay long. The second hole was the charm, along with the third hole. We got into the snook well, and boated easily a couple dozen snook to 29 inches and 9 pounds, including 3 keepers, along with 6 redfish. Dave caught the biggest snook while we had a couple of others on the line, with a Yozuri Banana Boat lure. Icing on the cake, as it were. Everyone agreed it was an awesome day.

The next two days were blown out by wind from another passing cold front. I was back on the water Friday with first time customers Dave and Kristen Twigg, of Kansas City, Kansas. We left the dock at 10 AM to fish the incoming tide. I wasn’t sure if the front had moved the bait, but headed straight to Chino Island. I was delighted to see tons of bait come to my chum, and we loaded the boat in two throws.

The tide was still on the last part of the falling side when we got to the first stop, but we managed to catch a couple of snook, a grouper, a jack, and a couple of catfish. Things didn’t turn on once the tide started in as I expected they would, so we were soon off to hit some potholes on this lowest tide of the season. The first hole was full of speckled trout. After catching 30 or so, we moved to another hole looking for snook. It wasn’t long before Dave had two or three to the boat, one a keeper. As soon as the water was right I moved to a third hole, and it proved to be the charm. We caught snook after snook, and by the time it was over we’d boated a good 30 snook and a big flounder. There were 4 keeper snook in the 30 inch range, along with many other nice sized fish. We stopped at one other spot for a few minutes on the way home, and caught a beautiful 4 pound trout.

At the Bait Shack cleaning fish, Dave gave me a wonderful compliment. He told me he had been on many guided fishing trips in many places, and that this had been one of the very best trips he’d been on. Sure made my day.

I think the fishing will continue to be great at least for the next several weeks. The weather will have a lot to do with that. Stay tuned, and get out there when you can.

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