Fishing Report for Pine Island Sound to Sarasota Bay, Florida

Capt. Butch Rickey
February 16, 2003
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report

REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING 2/15/2003 by Capt. Butch Rickey

I only had one trip this week, but it was a good trip, and a fun trip, with a couple of great guys, Peter Burnand, and his dad Burney. Looks like this will be the last of slow times for the foreseeable future, as from here into April the books are filling quickly. If you’re wanting to fish this spring and haven’t yet contacted me, don’t wait any longer. I’d hate to have to turn you away.

I met Pete and Burney at the dock at 7 AM, and it promised to be a great day weather-wise. We had a pretty good tide, and I was expecting descent fishing. We headed straight to the third span of the causeway, where there were already a handful of guide casting for bait. A couple were anchored and chumming, but the tide was moving quickly, and I wasn’t sure that was the best tact to take. After a few throws with Pete at the helm, and only one shiner in the well, I decided to try chumming, too. After putting down a lot of chum and throwing all over the chummed area, we only got one load of threadfins. We could fish with them, but I knew most would die before we could use them. I wanted shiners. As far as I could tell, most of the other guides were only getting threads, as well. I decided the bait was probably well out of range down the chum slick. So, with Pete at the helm, we wend down current and threw the net in the eddy behind one of the main pilings about 100 feet down current from my friend Capt.

Bubba Shearer. As I suspected, we got a good load of all shiners. Great! I decided I’d throw once more to make sure we had plenty, and on the second throw we loaded up, again. After a quick cleanup, it was time to go fishing.

The tide was so low the Sound looked like a freshly emptied bathtub, with land showing everywhere. I headed to a deep cut that flows into a small bay, thinking it would be a good place to let the boys get used to the equipment, and maybe catch a snook. We did get a few snook hits, albeit very subtle ones. And, I showed the boys how each of our fish have their own signature bite marks they leave on a bait.

As the water began to rise, I headed to a couple of my favorite trout spots, but for some reason we saw very little action. I was puzzled. As the rising water got right, we headed to the first snook hole, a large pothole, where we were once again greeted by a slow bite. I moved around on the hole until we finally found where the fish were holding. Once we did, we had pretty good action for a while. Pete and Burney both caught some snook and trout, and Pete got a nice 27 inch keeper snook as well as several keeper trout.

Once we were sure the action was over there, we headed to a series of potholes north in the Sound. To my chagrin, we didn’t muster the first fish. We headed on to another deep hole where the water had all but stopped moving, but the snook were still willing to eat. I had been trying to prepare the boys for the eventuality of a big snook attacking a bait in the mangroves, and it finally came. We had seen several big snook follow our baits almost right to the boat without taking them, and knew they were there. Finally, it came. Burney’s bait was eaten with a vengeance. He was so startled at the power of the snook, he stuffed the rod into my hands and told me to catch it. After we got the 11 pound snook in the boat and took pictures of what was Burney’s fish, he laughingly told me he would have had a heart attack trying to land that fish.

In all, the boys and I missed a lot of snook, reeling back many baits that had been scaled by the toothless torpedoes, but we boated a dozen nice snook including three keepers, and several nice trout to 3.5 pounds, and had a hell of a good time, and I look forward to their return.

I’m tellin’ ya! Once this water warms up a little bit more, all snook hell is going to bust loose. Wait and see! I’ll be checking may favorite snook haunts on a daily basis, cause I want to be there when it happens.

Tight Lines!

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