As the weather in southwest Florida heats up, so goes the fishing. I'm seeing lots of quality snook now, big fish, but not a lot of them are making it to boatside. Here are the week's details.
Sunday, a day I usually don't like to fish, belonged to Steve and Mike Wien. Steve is a young man just graduating from college, who I'd been looking forward to meeting for some time. He's an avid fisherman, and loves to snook fish. Most of his fishing is confined to docks and canals around his parents' vacation home. They have a boat available, but not one that will get into the skinny stuff.
Steve has his own fishing web site at www.eng.usf.edu/~wien/fishing/. This is a young man that loves it! I was concerned that Steve may not like my brand of snook fishing, since he's usually fishing heavy tackle around docks, etc. at night, but Steve and Mike soon realized that shallow water fishing for snook with light tackle has a pretty high degree of difficulty. Adding to that was a southwest wind gusting over 20 knots.
I took the boys to one of my favorite incoming tide spots, and the fish were there and willing to cooperate. The fish were aggressive, and I tried to get the boys to be just as aggressive, but by the end of the fishing day we only had 8 snook to 27 inches in the boat. The best part is that Steve and Mike had tangled with a total of 25 snook. Steve missed 7 hits outright, and lost 4 fish, including the snook of a lifetime. The big female hit that shiner like a freight train smashing a Ford Pinto, and never looked back. Steve and I quickly realized that this was a world class snook; after all, it was about to spool a Shimano Stradic 2000 spooled up with Excel 12 pound line against a 3 pound drag setting. When I realized that the bottom of the spool was coming up, I dashed to the rear of the boat to cut the anchor rope lose, but heard the drag quit screaming just as I grabbed the rope. The hook had pulled lose! Damn! That fish had to be in the 20 to 30 pound range. Oh well, to finish the story, Mike also missed 6 hits.
Actually, Steve and Mike did pretty well. But, they found out it's no easy feat catching even the smaller snook on light tackle in skinny water. The cast must be long. That means that you have to overcome line slack and line stretch when you're setting the hook. Mr. Snook loves to jump, especially when he's in shallow water, and that makes it even tougher. He's good at getting rid of the hook. Hey 8 out of 25 is batting around 300, which is a darned good number for a baseball player.
Monday, I was supposed to fish with Kent Riedesel, now of Cape Coral, but the wind was really up out of the northwest and gusting to over 25 knots. Since Kent is local, we opted to try another day.
By Tuesday, the wind had laid to 15 knots, and it was looking like a hot one. Mike Nalipi, a custom rod builder from Orangeburg, New York, and his buddies Joe and Henry were in town to try their hand at our brand of fishing. Mike wanted to wade with his flyrod, and wanted a redfish on fly in the worse way.
I went to a small key in the north end of the Sound that has great shallow flats around it, as well as lots of good holes. As we moved in we saw reds pushing everywhere. I knew they'd be tough, because the water was so clear that in the shallows it seemed the boat was riding on a carpet of grass.
Mike was quick to leave the boat and go on a raid with his flyrod. I gave him a spoonfly I though might do the trick. Joe, Henry, and I went on around the key and fished some of the holes with shiners. While we were doing that, we heard Mike celebrating on the other side of the mangrove key, and knew he'd gotten his red on fly. Great!
Soon, I spotted a school of reds pushing not far from us and decided our best shot was to chase them with spoons, which would give us the distance we needed in the gin-clear water. We bagged 2 more reds. As the tide flooded the flats, I realized it was time to chase snook, and made the move. The snook proved to be no easy feat for the trio, and they lost a lot of them. I didn't manage to keep track of how many came to the boat or got away, but there were quite a few.
Mike and the boys were great. Mike put no pressure on me to produce. Man, it's nice to have the pressure removed. Seems to make things easier. You might want to visit Mike's website at www.rodsmiths.com. Mike can build you any kind of rod you can dream up.
I took Wednesday and Thursday off to take delivery of, and set up a new computer system for my Ft. Myers office. I bought another Pentium Pro II 266 MH with 64 MB of SRAM. I used disk drives, CD ROM, etc., from the old 133.
Friday morning conditions were near perfect for beach snooking, with a slight easterly breeze first thing in the morning. Bob Morrison, President and CEO of Taurus International (gun manufacturer), and his CFO/Comptroller David Baker were over from Miami to try their hands at snook fishing.
Taurus builds high quality weapons a more favorable prices than most other manufacturers. As I understand the story, Taurus bought out Smith and Wesson's South American operation, made important but subtle modifications, and now builds a superior product. Bob may call or email me with corrections, but that's what I've heard from reliable sources.
Bob and David were lots of fun to fish with. Bob was full of jokes that I'd never heard, and has a great sense of humor. David was the less seasoned angler of the two, but of course, managed to catch the most fish. By trip's end they'd gotten their West Coast Slam, and had a total of 15 snook, 1 trout to 22 inches, and a redfish. They collectively missed lots of hits. I'm looking forward to taking Bob and David tarpon fishing this summer.
The last trip of the week, Saturday, was with my good buddy Steve Ladd. I gotta tell ya, Steve has become one of my all time favorite customers. He's just great. He's funny as hell, loves to fish more than anything, has no unrealistic expectations, and completely removes the pressure from the guide. It's more like fishing with an old buddy. I have Steve scheduled for Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It should be a fun three days.
Saturday was full of snook. We got our bait and immediately headed for the beach scene. El Nino fell lots of new Australian Pines this winter, and the area offers lots more cover than it used to. Saturday morning the snook were there, and were willing to eat. Once the bite stopped on the outside, we moved inside and caught some more. By the time Steve was done, he'd caught and released 25 snook to 27 inches, 2 nice trout, and an 8 pound jack. He'd lost as many snook as he caught, including some monsters! It was a great day!
Hell, it was a great week! Life is good. Fishing is good, and getting
better. Stay tuned.