Fishing Report for Pine Island Sound to Sarasota Bay, Florida

Capt. Butch Rickey
May 28, 2006
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report

REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING 5/27/6

by

Capt. Butch Rickey

It was a busy week filled with old friends and a couple of new folks. With increasingly better new moon tides, fishing seemed to improve as the week went along. The weather was overcast and drizzly for most of the week, which helped keep us cool. We finished with a bang on Friday.

First up was Steve Weasel, who is fairly new to Cape Coral, and his friend Craig Holmes visiting from Los Angeles. I had talked to Steve a lot via email, and was looking forward to meeting him. I could tell he would be a fun guy. We met at first light and headed straight to the Picnic Island bait grounds. For whatever reason, we couldn’t get a shiner chummed in to save our lives. We had some nice pinfish, and of course, plenty of threadfins. So, finally, I kept as many threads as I figured I could keep alive most of the day, some nice pins, and we went fishing. Craig had brought along a flyrod, but as tough as the catching has been I wasn’t hopeful he would be able to catch a snook or a red on fly in our clear water.

The fishing was tough. The first couple of stops produced nothing but scaled baits. At the next stop I decided it was time to abandon the live threadfins in favor of sliced and diced pinfish. Finally, we boated the first redfish, and missed another one. After working over the area well and giving the reds plenty of time, we moved on.

At the next stop it was the same thing. We boated two reds, and then it was over. We were on fish, but they just weren’t interested in eating. At least at this point we had a limit of redfish in the well. Our bait wasn’t very happy!

At this point I figured it might be good to just go and let the guys see if they could catch some trout, ladyfish, or whatever might be willing to eat. And, I figured this would be Craig’s best shot at getting something to eat his fly. So, we took up residency on a long bar where fish were crashing bait for about as far as the eye could see. I knew this would be trout, ladyfish, mackerel, and perhaps jacks.

I suggested Craig begin with a white clouser minnow, thinking it would closely resemble the flash of the threadfins in the water. Apparently it did, as Craig seemed to be getting lots of hits, and caught a mackerel, several trout, and some ladyfish, and was having a great time. Steve and I were tossing lures. I was using a Bass Assassin, and managed a couple of nice trout and ladyfish, and Steve was having gun experimenting with lots of the goodies in his tacklebox. At one point he pulled out a green topwater frog, but I think he did it just to get a rise out of me.

We had seen several tarpon roll nearby, and knew we had some in the area. I kept one of the ladyfish out behind the boat on a big circle hook, but never got a take. But, we had fun playing with all the different fish and trying different lures and flies to see what we could catch. As Craig said so eloquently, it’s all about the “take”!

Tuesday belonged to my long-time friend and customer Chic Bruning, and his brother-in-law, Jeff. Chic has family history and ties to Sanibel, where his Mom still resides. Chic will be spending a lot more time here fishing now that he is recently retired.

We headed to Picnic Island for bait, hoping that the shiners would be there in full force. They were, and with Chic chumming it didn’t take us too long to load up and be headed to the first fishing hole.

Our first stop is a beautiful little spot in McKeever Keys that has been holding redfish and snook. We used popping corks to give us the ability to get our baits up against the mangroves from a good distance away, and to help us keep track of where our baits were, once cast. The reds were there, and we managed to catch a few, but didn’t see any snook action.

On to the next spot looking for more redfish. It’s a beautiful spot that almost always has redfish and snook hiding somewhere in the area. Sometimes there all over, and sometimes they’re bunched up in one area. Lately they’ve been tending to be in one small area, and I was pretty sure I could find them. It took a little while of looking with out baits, but we did find the reds, and caught some nice ones.

Once we were sure we’d caught all that were going to eat we moved on, again. This would be our last stop, and it’s one of my favorite areas for redfish. We had the same kind of results, catching a few redfish before the tide was full high, and after it began going out. We made sure the fish were done before calling it a day. We’d racked up a total of a dozen or so redfish of varying sizes. Under our prevailing conditions, it was a good day of redfishing.

On the way home Chic commented that one of the reasons he enjoyed fishing with me was that he always learned something new. This had been the first time in all the years we’ve fished together that we’d fished with popping corks. This had been the clearest the water has been on any of our trips.

Wednesday was the first of two trips with Ken Feldman, of State College, Pennsylvania. Ken is considering our area for his retirement in ten years. He wants to do plenty of fishing once he retires. His wife and daughter also love to fish. As we gathered bait at Picnic Island and chatted, Ken told me of a number of bad experiences he’d had with guides in the past. I think he was rightfully worried that this would be more of the same, but he did assure me that he felt good with his decision based upon lots of time spent on my website. I hoped he would still feel that way after our two days of fishing.

We met at 6:30 and were off to catch bait at Picnic. The bait on Tuesday had been beautiful, and I hope it would be this day, as well. Although it took some time to get the shiners chummed in, once we did we caught plenty of them. We were set.

I was hoping that I’d be able to take Ken out on the beaches for some snook fishing. I hadn’t been out to check on most of the areas since last year, and didn’t know what, if anything, the hurricanes had done to the summer habitat. Although the forecast was for light winds out of the northwest, I was concerned about getting caught a long way from the closest pass in bumpy seas if the wind kicked. I elected to try to get it done inside.

We headed up into the Sound on the east side and settled on a small mangrove key. The wind direction made it hard to fish the side I wanted to fish, but we made it work, and Ken caught two snook, including a slot fish. We spent a bit more time working on snook with no results, so I decided it was time to turn our attention to redfish. We had a better chance of a good redfish day, anyway.

We moved to an area that has been holding a lot of redfish for the last few weeks, and went to work. They weren’t easy, but we did manage a few nice redfish before the action was over. We were again using popping corks to get out distance and keep track of our baits. A short move had us again catching a couple of redfish before the tide was done. We finished the day with 2 snook and 7 reds. Not a big numbers day, but a good day, and Ken was happy.

Because Ken had a plane to catch early Thursday afternoon, we decided to leave a little earlier, and hopefully get bait quickly and get on the fish. I wanted to get outside to check the snook situation out. The plan was a good one, and we quickly had enough bait for a morning of fishing. I wasn’t worried about loading the well with a ton of bait, as I didn’t expect to have to do much, if any, chumming. We were on the way across the Sound to the Gulf by around 7 AM.

The ride in the darkness to the bait, and now the ride down the almost flat beach was exhilarating. It was beautiful out. As we arrived at what I used to call the Stickbeach, I was beyond shocked. The beach looked nothing like it had before Charley, and nothing like it had afterward, either. Apparently, hurricane Wilma had badly eroded the beach, and there isn’t the first piece of wood laying in the water. There are what looks like small cliffs along the beach from the extreme erosion.

There was one boat on the beach with what appeared to be a guide and two anglers. I decided to approach on he trolling motor close enough to chat and ask him about the fishing. But, whoever he was he wasn’t very sociable, and before I could even say the first word was going on about me not fishing there. I guess he thought I was going to come in and anchor on top of him, or something. I assured him we weren’t going to bother his fishing and moved on. At that point, I had no interest in anything he had to say, and figured anything I might have to say wouldn’t be pleasant.

We moved along on the Minn Kota slowly, pitching shiners up along the beach. As soon as we hit the first fish, I anchored. Although it wasn’t the raging, crazy bite we were used to seeing in years gone by, we managed to catch 13 good snook, and missed a few more. We lost a couple, too. It was great fun for Ken while it lasted. At around ten o’clock we decided to head back inside to see if we could get on some more redfish.

And, find them we did. In fact, we found a nice school, and if we could have gotten them to turn on, we could have had a field day with them. Ken finished up at the last stop with one more snook and 7 or 8 redfish. It made for a pretty good day of fishing for Ken, and I think it was one of his biggest days. Back at the ramp as we said our good-byes, Ken thanked me profusely and said that he had waited for twenty years for this day. That sure left a lump in my throat. Something tells me we’ll be seeing Ken and his family living in southwest Florida before it’s over.

It’s Friday, and my old friend Bo Mack is back in town with his friend Bill Moncrief. I hadn’t seen Bill a several years. We got started before the sun was up, and again had bait by 7 AM, or so. I was feeling pretty good about our prospects as we made our way to the first stop of the day. But, that changed quickly. We fished a lot of great redfish territory without so much as a bite. Here we were on the best tide of the month, and we couldn’t get a bite. I was befuddled.

We kept at it, and time kept slipping away. I reminded Bo that I wasn’t one to give up. Bo acknowledged that I always seemed to be able to work the magic. My ace in the hole was the school of redfish I’d found the day before. I just knew they would be right there waiting on me on the same stage of the tide. And, they were.

We pulled in on the flat, and although I couldn’t see the school moving around, I could see fish moving, and knew they were there. I began live chumming, and before long saw the one thing that usually means you’re about to have a big redfish bite. Several redfish blew up my chum. Frantically, I got a bait on top of one of the swirls, and it was immediately inhaled. Oh, boy! I could feel it. The fish were going to eat.

For the next couple of hours we had an absolute blast catching reds. The school had literally settled in right off the starboard side of the boat. We were catching them as fast as we could, and had several double and one triple hookup. Yes, the boys even let me catch two or three fish!

I knew that the bite couldn’t last much beyond around one o’clock, and told the boys that it would end with the tide like someone had flipped a switch. And, although it didn’t end that abruptly, it did eventually quickly wind down. We hung until we were sure the fish were done feeding. Our best guesstimate was that we had boated a minimum of 30 redfish, and a maximum of 40. On the last stop of the day, it had been a fantastic day.

It had been a pretty darned good week. It’s always great to fish with old friends. And, it’s great to know you’ve made new friends, as well. It’s the best part of the business.

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