Fishing Report for Pine Island Sound to Sarasota Bay, Florida

Capt. Butch Rickey
August 21, 2002
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report

REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING 8/17/2002 by Capt. Butch Rickey

There were three trips to talk about this week. The fishing in the August heat has remained slow for me. Here’s how it went.

Tuesday was my first trip with Ron Levy of Inter-tel, in Ft. Lauderdale, and his boss, president of Inter-tel, Craig Rochell. We had a really tough falling tide, and I expected it would be a tough day. It was, right from the start.

On advice from a guide buddy of mine, I went to Tarpon Bay expecting to find nice sized shiners very plentiful. Instead, after an hour, we had nothing but pinfish. I never saw a shiner. I headed to Chino Island, where bait had been plentiful last week, and again had problems finding bait. I had to move a couple of times before finally finding bait, and what we did catch was very small.

Wanting to try to optimize what fishing time we had I went straight to the beach of Cayo Costa expecting to find schools of snook cruising the shoreline. I ran on the trolling motor for quite some time and never saw the first fish. In desperation, I went to a spot midway up the island where there are always snook hanging out, but we caught only one.

From there we went and fished the sticks on North Captiva without so much as a hit. I probably should have gone trout fishing, but opted to stay after snook and/or redfish, and did something I don’t like doing at all; fished Redfish Pass on the wall. Surely we would tangle with snook there! Well, we only caught two snook, small for the wall, and one nice redfish. By that time the weather was beginning to look threatening, and we hightailed it to the Waterfront Restaurant for lunch. By the time lunch was over, the weather seemed to have built to the east and appeared to be coming toward us with a lot of lightning. We opted for safety first and headed in. It had been one tough day.

Next up on Friday were Lamar Smith and his sons Aaron and Graham, of Harlingen, Texas. They do grow things big in Texas, folks! These boys were all 6 ft. 4 inches. At 6 ft. 2 in., I was the short guy!

We headed right across to Picnic for bait, and although it has started off slowly there every day, when the shiners eventually come, they’re great looking baits, and there are plenty of them. Of course, we kept some pinfish, too.

Since the two boys are in college, and said they hadn’t fished in several years, I decided a fitting way to start would be trout fishing, to give them time to get familiar with the equipment and techniques before getting into reds or snook. I went to a flat off Regla Island, where we found a good trout bite, and even my Texas boys admitted we had some nice trout here.

After an hour or so of trout fishing we headed on up into the Sound in search of reds and snook. We found redfish holed up near a mangrove key, and managed to catch about half dozen of them before they quit biting.

All we needed was a snook for the Slam. We hit a few more spots looking for snook without so much as a hit. The tide was now falling off the flats, and I decided the best bet would be another session of drifting the Wall at Redfish Pass. The wind had kicked to around 20 from the southeast, and the bay was sloppy. The pass was awful, especially as you got closer to the inlet.

We made several drifts with the usual hang-ups and breakoffs, and Lamar finally scored a nice snook of 7 pounds. We made a couple more drifts without hooking up, and called it a day. The ride home was a bumpy one. We’d had a descent day for this time of year, and the Smith boys were fun to fish with.

It’s Saturday! It was the only day Ari Sweetbalm had to bring his beautiful ballet dancer girlfriend Kris over from Miami for a day of fishing. I had a gut feeling they would be great young people, and I had to take them fishing! It was our first trip together. I knew it would be a tough day with all the boat traffic, the heat, and a poor tide.

We headed to Picnic for bait, and Kris jumped right in there and did the chumming. This girl wasn’t afraid to get her hands yuckie! As it has, it took a while to get the bait chummed up, and in fact Ari relieved Kris half was through, but we got nice bait, and were off.

The trout thing had been fun with the Smith boys, so I decided to begin the day that way again. We didn’t have the great bite of the day before, but we caught several nice trout before moving on.

The hunt for reds and snook was a tough one. We found the reds, but they weren’t interested in eating. We caught one right away, and lost several. Kris also caught a couple of real nice mangrove snapper. But, the battle of the day for Kris was with a stingray about four feet across that just gave her fits. Boy, did she talk to that fish. She gave it hell while it gave her hell! But she hung on, and we finally got the ray to boatside and cut it loose. She had red marks on her tummy from the rod butt for the rest of the day. We finally got a snook for the Slam, but were just never able to get a bite going.

We did have fun, though, as I knew we would. We finished at the Waterfront Restaurant for lunch, where Ari actually consumed one of the mammoth burgers. He said it lived up to the billing I had given it earlier. Ari is a fisherman, and understands the woes of fishing on the weekend. He vowed to be back on a weekday with a good tide. I can’t wait.

That’s how it went over three days. Next week the tides will be much better, and I have the same work schedule. Stay tuned.

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