Fishing Report for Pine Island Sound to Sarasota Bay, Florida

Capt. Butch Rickey
March 4, 2003
Pine Island Sound - Saltwater Fishing Report

REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING 3/1/03 by Capt. Butch Rickey

This will go down as a record week for me, record in a negative way. I lost three of my trips this week; two to cancellations, and one to a no-show. In my fifteen years of guiding, I’ve never had that happen before. I understand when people sometimes have to cancel, but I will never understand when someone books a trip, and then fails to show up without so much as a phone call or an email to let me know. It’s the worst kind of thoughtless and rude. I would just love to hear Rudy Morris explain to me why he did just that.

So, that left me with one trip for the week. It was a fun day with Dr. Bob Vinson, who now resides on Captiva, just a few doors away from where I grew up, and his friend Joe Kelley, of Shoreham, Vermont. We met Friday at 7:30 AM, and it looked like it would be a nice day. This was to be an instructional trip for Bob, but I wanted to get him into some action, as well as try to teach him what he wanted to know.

Little did I know when we left the dock, bait would be the the big issue of the day. We headed to the third span expecting to get bait quickly, but boy was I wrong. I anchored and began chumming, but the tide was already running in, aided by the south wind. We chummed and chummed, and I threw and threw, but never saw the first living thing. I was just pulling my anchor when another boat came approaching quickly from my starboard side. At first I thought it was some lunatic looking for trouble, but it turned out to be my best friend, Capt. Butch Boteler, in his customer’s new Pathfinder 2200. I gave him the bad news on the bait, and we both began working the bridge from piling to piling. Nothing. Finally, I went over and told Butch I thought the bait had moved to the flats. We split up in order to double our efforts.

I and my guys checked out the first and second spans before heading to the flats, and then headed to Picnic Island. There was one other boat there, who had drawn the same conclusion, and Butch was just arriving, too. I anchored on the edge of the flats where the bait is usually best, but never saw the first shiner. Butch called me on the cell and told me he’d seen another boat pulling up some shiners, and was going to check it out. Turned out the bait was thick out to the south of Picnic in about six feet of water. By the time I got there, Butch had a net full of bait waiting on me. What a beautiful sight. The good news was we had plenty of beautiful bait, and this signals the end of catching bait at the causeway until next winter.

Finally, we were fishing. But, it was nearly ten o’clock. I hated that Bob had drawn the day where bait was in transition, and a problem. Happens twice a year; spring and fall. At the first snook hole we found mostly big winter trout. We had some snook hits, but only boated one at the first stop. It was still a good hole, and gave us lots of fish. The second hole also gave us some nice trout, but only several baits that came back with the unmistakable scaled mid-section that means a snook had hit the bait.

I wanted to spend part of the trip showing Bob a few things about how to fish in his own back yard on Captiva. We were near the top of the tide, and I knew I would be able to show him some great spots that will be turning on very soon. So we headed over to Captiva, and I was surprised when I stopped the Talon to find myself touching bottom. I was sitting on a slight rise on the flat, and had to push her off. Once off and on the trolling motor, we spotted a few fish. I hadn’t expect to see anything of consequence for another week or two. We decided to see if we could catch one of the reds we’d seen, and put out several lines with different baits, two live, two cut. We caught a couple of snook and a big trout on the cut baits, but no reds.

We were all getting very hungry, so it was time to introduce the boys to the Waterfront. We had a great meal there, and afterward decided to go hit a few more spots. The tide was now outgoing, and I didn’t expect to find much happening, but I could still show Bob some places to fish. We didn’t find anything else that would eat, but I did make the observation that some of the shallow flats seem to be silting in, and becoming shallower. Boy, could that change things if it continues. Anyway, we had a good time, and Bob told me he’d learned a lot of what he had visions of learning.

We have hit the magic 70 degree mark. And, things are predictably beginning to bust loose. I have a full week this week, barring any freak occurrences as in last week. Next week’s report should be full of fishing tales! Stay tuned.

Tight Lines!

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