Fishing Report for Pine Island Sound to Sarasota Bay, Florida

Capt. Butch Rickey
July 8, 2006
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report

REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING 7/8/06 by Capt. Butch Rickey

Weather was once again a factor in getting trips run this week. We've had deluge after deluge since Thursday morning, and there's lots of water standing everywhere.

I had a fun trip with one of my favorite fishing buddies, Bob Brockway, over from Parkland, Florida, on Monday, for his annual 4th of July vacation week at the Pink Shell. Our normal MO is to fish lures, and to show Bob new areas to fish. In planning the trip I decided it would be good to should him areas that are closer to where he stays, rather than way up in the Sound. So, the plan was to stay in the general area of the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River and Matlacha Pass.

I met Bob at the Pink Shell at six o'clock Monday morning, and we got away from the dock just before dawn. We headed to some small keys near the mouth of Matlacha Pass that get good current flow when the water is moving. Our problem for the day was that we were fishing a very slow moving falling tide. A tough tide to fish.

We both began the morning with topwater plugs, but I chose a very large one to target big snook. Bob hit the first fish on one of his first casts, and put a speckled trout in the boat. His second fish was a small snook that threw the lure close to the boat. Later, after a lure change, he boated a nice slot redfish. He had nearly put a Slam in the boat on his first three fish. My large lure selection wasn't attracting attention, but I wasn't concerned. I stuck with it.

Our next stop was a beautiful area up the river that is home to snook, redfish, cobia, big jacks, and sometimes big black drum. We fished it hard to no avail, and never had a hit. We moved on. We worked our way down a long shoreline toward Sword Point, again with no results. We did see a lot of life, though.

Our last stop was in Punta Blanca Creek. I tied on a Rattletrap. Bob noted that he'd never done much with Rattletraps, but it's one of my favorite baits for winter fishing in deeper holes, cuts, canals, etc., and dittos for the dog days of summer. I struck first blood and somewhat redeemed myself from the failure of my topwater lure with a nice redfish on the Rattletrap. Bob tied one on in short order. Although we didn't hit another red in that place, Bob did catch a couple of snook and another redfish a little farther in, and I hit a ladyfish.

It hadn't been an easy day of fishing, but it was indeed fun, and about as good as we could have expected on such a poor tide. And, Bob did get his Slam.

I was to have my first trip with Tom Sciascia Thursday morning. I was awaked to the sound of heavy rain at around 4 AM, and soon afterward the rumble of thunder. I checked two radars on the computer, finding a large area of storms stretched south into the gulf beyond Naples. It appeared to be moving north, and I hoped that by the time 6 AM rolled around it would be cleared out.

But, that didn't happen. When I arrived at the ramp several guides were waiting put their boats into the water. There was a lot of lighting and thunder approaching, and even in the dark you could see the silhouette of the big storm approaching. Soon there were several boats hitting the docks in the darkness just in front of the storm. The rains were heavy, and virtually all of us canceled our trips and went home. Don't you know the weather pulled back to the south and stayed there all day, and we cleared out at around eight o'clock. It was beautiful until late that afternoon.

Tom only had Friday to fish. Fortunately, my friend Eric Smith, who is local, was nice enough to reschedule to later in the month for our trip. I met Tom Friday morning, Maverick at the ready and needing exercise. Although there were a lot of clouds building onshore, it looked like the weather would hold. We headed across the river and joined Capt. Max Stanford to catch bait. The bait came quickly, but once in the confines of the baitwell, it became obvious that the red tide was in the water. My bait was dying quickly. By the time Tom and I could idle our of the manatee zone, almost all of it was dead. We would have to start over.

I stopped on the flat along the main channel in front of York Island to see if we could catch bait. In half a dozen throws we again had a full well, and were off to see if we could find some action for my first time customer. The bait was happy, which meant the water was good.

As I made the approach to our first stop we were treated to something I have never seen happen in the Sound. There were hundreds of snook thrashing baits in the spot we were going to fish. The were running, jumping, slicing, and dicing bait. It was really cool to see. It's fairly common to see the snook on the beaches do that behavior in July, but to see it on the flats was a first for me.

I couldn't' wait to get a bait into the water, and it was immediately smashed. As Tom fought the first fish to the boat, I tossed two more baits and put the rods into the bow rod holders. They were also immediately crushed. Yes. I wanted to keep Tom as busy as I could for as long as possible. Ironically, in the middle of all those snook, that first fish was a nice redfish. Well, for the next couple of hours Tom caught fish after fish, pretty well mixed redfish and snook. He must have caught 6 or 7 keeper snook that ranged from over 27 to 29 inches. It was a great bite, and Tom had never experienced anything like it. He said that it was the best fishing he'd ever done. But, as the tide came to a stop, so did the bite. It was pretty abrupt. We knew there were tons of fish there, and I figured we had a good shot at another bite once the tide began to move out. We had to wait the better part of an hour for it to move, and once it did we caught a few more fish, but with full tummies, the big bite was over for the day.

We moved on to another area not too far away, and again got into some snook action. A couple more stops produced nothing, and we knew it was over for the day. It was around 10:30, and the weather appeared to be building all around us. We had missed some heavy rains earlier, and had see lightning in the distance. Tom said that in light of what a great day it had been, we could just head in to safety. I thought that was a good call. It had been a great day with a great guy, but might be hard to top in the future.

By the time I got home and got things cleaned up and put away, the bottom fell out. We had a heck of a good storm and heavy rains. If we hadn't come in a little early we surely would have been caught in that mess!

That's how it went. The tides are improving as we go along this coming week, and if we can get out of this rainy pattern we're in, the fishing might be pretty good. That, of course, is also predicated upon what the red tide does this week. It's on our doorsteps. I hope it stays there.

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