Two Outta Three Ain't Bad!
Capt. Butch Rickey
June 5, 2014
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report
Report for the week ending 4/19/14...........
I had three trips on the books this week. The Tuesday trip was a no-show. It was the friend of a good friend, and I was foolish enough not to require a deposit. It just never seems to work out well. Fishing remains tough no matter where we're fishing, right now. But, we did put together a good day of redfishing, as well as some good trout fishing.
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First up on Monday was Bruce Grodner, of Cortland, New York. I met Bruce at Matlacha Park at 7:30. We had a slow outgoing tide until around 8:30, and I wanted to try to catch the last of it in a beautiful place that is usually full of snook and redfish. We fished the edges, and got out and did some wading before it was over. The bite was totally shut down. We managed a small redfish on a silver spoon early on, and that was it.
We moved on down to another beautiful area that has good flow, and while Bruce fished the edges, I went hunting. It didn't take me long to find a small school of redfish that were in the slot. They wouldn't eat! A short time later, I found another school of bigger reds that were probably out of the slot. I got some good shots at them, but they refused my offerings, as well.
Bruce and I weren't dissuaded, and kept at it until we began running short on time. Bruce had still not caught a fish, nor I another, so I suggested we switch gears and see if we could find some speckled trout, and end the day on a bit of action. He was agreeable, and the plan was to slow troll our jig in the area where I usually find them, and then anchor and fish once we hooked a fish or two.
It turned out to be a good plan, and once I stuck the first trout and anchored up, the bite was on. We boated 32 trout in about 40 minutes, between the two of us. The bite predictably stopped when the tide reached full high, and we headed in.
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I had my first trip with Pete Hartzell, of York, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. We fished Estero Bay, which I love to fish most of the time. We had a dead low tide at 8:08 AM, and a good high at 2 PM. But, we also had a front coming towards us, and it had just began to influence our weather with a very stiff easterly wind. It howled all day. And, the catching suffered for the better part of the day.
We began on the west side of the bay, and fished spots that have historically been very good for redfish and snook. I don't recall catching a thing for the first half of the day. I decided to take Pete to the east side of the bay, and park him on a favorite spot of mine. It rarely disappoints, and getting a SLAM right there is not unusual. Once I had Pete parked and gave him some instruction on how to fish the spot, I went off hunting a redfish or snook bite of more than one fish.
I finally did catch a beautiful redfish of 26". The hook on my silver The Secret spoon broke once he was in the boat. Best spoons I've ever used, but bigger redfish can definitely break the hook once they've got some age and some notches on them. I hoped another red would set a pattern. It wasn't forthcoming. I did catch a nice trout on a Mirrorlure Top Pup, though. And, it jumped completely out of the water when it struck the lure. Don't know that I'd ever seen a trout do that, before.
I called Pete for a report, and he wasn't catching. I wanted to get to to our last stops of the day in time to fish them well before the tide stopped moving, so we took off. We were also fishing behind a full moon, which typically means the fish won't eat until late into the incoming tide the next day. If we were going to get on a good bite, it was time. I posted Pete at a favorite redfish spot of mine, and explained how to fish it. I went on to another spot in hopes of finding a redfish or snook bite. And, I did. Better yet, so did Pete. Pete finished with 4 or 5 reds, and I finished with 4 and a trout.
So, we managed to put together a pretty good day of redfishing, all in the last couple hours of the tide. It was the best day with reds in Estero Bay in a while.
Target Species:
Snook and redfish
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