Fishing Report for Pine Island Sound to Sarasota Bay, Florida

Capt. Butch Rickey
February 17, 2002
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report

CONSOLIDATED REPORT FOR THE WEEKS OF 2/9 AND 2/16/2002 by Capt. Butch Rickey

The week ending February 9th was pretty much a blowout with lots of wind and some rainy weather. I managed to get in one trip with my good fishing buddy Dr. John Hitt, and his good friend Tom Yocum, who sits on John's Board of Trustees at UCF. I believe this was Tom's first flats fishing trip here in the Sound.

We had an early tide and decided to get right after it. We were able to get great bait at Picnic Island without too much ado, and were off. We had just had a front pass through, but it didn't seem to be a strong one, and I thought the effect on the fishing would be negligible. Boy was I wrong! The fish had lockjaw everywhere we went. We had a lot of the old "pop and drop" routine that snook can be so good at when they don't really want to eat. You feel the thump, try to get tight to the fish, but can't. You bring back a bait that's missing it's scales across the midsection, but you can't get one hooked to save your life. We did manage to get one nice 27 inch snook in the boat, and I think a couple of jacks. Later, we turned our efforts to trout, and even they wouldn't eat! We only caught three trout, but they were nice ones to 4 pounds.

We finished our day at the Waterfront Restaurant with a great lunch. Back at the ramp our one snook and three big trout got a bit of attention, so I'm guessing most of those out that day didn't do very well, either.

After just one day off, I was back on the water on Monday, and what a difference. My customer, Mike LaValle, of Des Moines, Iowa, was staying in Safety Harbor, on North Captiva. I had to pick him up there, as the only access to the island is by air or sea. I left the ramp at around 7 AM, and headed to Picnic Island for bait. Although by myself, I was able to catch plenty of bait to fish with in less than an hour. There was a boat not 50 yards away not catching anything. That always amazes me! I was up at North Captiva by around 8:30. With Mike safely aboard, we headed back across the Sound.

The breeze was northeast at 10 to 15, and the expected high was to be in the 70's. There was no water! I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it turned out that the fish were in a pretty playful mood. Mike bagged around half dozen snook, and lost a nice keeper, as well as 4 - 6 jack crevalle. Getting a keeper snook to the boat is not as easy as it might seem, and Mike wanted fish for the family while locked away on North Captiva, so we went trout fishing to put the meat on the table. We got into the big trout big-time, and Mike had a great time catching plenty of them. We kept 8 trout to 4 pounds, which gave Mike plenty of meat for the stay on the island. We finished our day at the Waterfront with a great shore lunch.

Tuesday was to be a morning of sightfishing for redfish with Allan Scott and his friend Harry, or Glenolden, Pennsylvania. As we rode to Picnic Island to catch bait, Allan informed me that he had told the girls that if the guide was good enough, he'd bring enough fish home to feed the twelve people in his vacation party. Whoa! Sight fishing is not meat fishing. The two are not very compatible. I told Allan we had to decide which we were going to do, and he said he wanted to keep the promise of plenty of fish for the gang. So, the sight fishing was off, and the snook and trout fishing were on. I knew that with anglers inexperienced at tangling with snook, trout would be the way to fill Scott's cooler with fish.

After getting plenty of nice bait at Picnic, we headed to the first of several snook holes. Allan and Harry caught several jack crevalle and several snook, but didn't boat anything big enough to keep. The current slot on snook is 26 to 34 inches. I suggested we move on to trout because I wanted to make sure the boys got their limit of big trout to take home. As we worked the holes, I think Allan and Harry were pleasantly surprised at the size of our winter trout. We caught a ton of trout, and culled the smaller of the slot fish for the larger as we caught them. We filled the Talon's huge baitwell with a limit of big trout to just under 5 pounds. Mission accomplished! Of course, we finished the day at the Waterfront Restaurant.

The last trip of the week was with Bruce Miller, who recently moved to Cape Coral. Bruce has an 18 ft. Robalo, and was interested in learning some of the basics of how to fish here during this time of year. One of the first issues this time of year is where to fish! We get seriously low tides that leave much of the flats that we normally fish inaccessible to all but the skinniest running flats skiffs. The irony is that on those low tides, many fish fall off the flats into the thousands of potholes in the Sound, and wait on the arrival of the next incoming tide. So, when you can't get onto the flats, you fish channels, cuts, edges, creeks, rivers, and so forth.

The incoming tide got off to a slow start, so I spent some time just showing Bruce some spots. We hit a few trout holes as the water began to move, and to my surprise, the trout didn't want to eat. I moved us to a hole that offers great snook fishing, as well as trout a flounder during winter. We had a slow start there, too, but did loose some nice fish. But the snook just weren't hitting as I expected. I moved us to a different position on the hole and chummed. Still nothing, but we began seeing my chum being smashed down the current from us. An adjustment was in order. Once made, we had some great snook action for quite some time. I don't know how many we caught, but we caught plenty, and lost plenty. Bruce also caught a good number of big trout to 5 pounds, and a couple of flounder at that spot and the next.

On the last hour or so of the tide, I took Bruce to show him the basics of bait fishing for redfish on the flats. We chummed with live and cut shiners and pinfish, and put out four rigs, two with fresh cut bait, and two with live shiners under popping corks. The big trout were the first to show up. Bruce was very surprised to see such big trout, and commented that he had never seen trout like these here. Bruce also caught two redfish to 29 inches, and a big stingray before the tide was done. We had lost our breeze and it had gotten downright hot that morning, and Bruce decided he had had a great time and was ready to head home. What began as a slow day, ended up being a pretty good one.

Next week we have some pretty high afternoon tides that might be good for fishing snook and reds in the bushes. We'll see how things play out.

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