After taking off the first couple of days this week to spend with my wife before she left for Hawaii, I returned to a week of extreme snook action. My folks outright missed, hooked and missed, and broke off well over 100 snook in four trips this week. Here's how it went.
First up were Richard and Liz Lewis and their friends Matt and Brenda, all from the Orlando area. I'd had them scheduled for a trip once before, but their plans changed at the last minute, and I didn't get to meet them. I was looking forward to spending the day with them. Rich, Matt and Brenda are all engineers at Westinghouse. Liz is a CPA. The Lewis' were staying up on the North Captiva in a house on Safety Harbor. That's a long run for a pickup, but the bait has been north, anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. I went first to Captiva Pass to catch bait, and after more than two hours, didn't have a shiner in the boat. A feeling of panic was setting in. The water was unbelievably clear this morning, and I couldn't get the shiners in close to the boat, even in eight feet of water. So, I picked up Rich and Liz, and Matt and Brenda, and we headed north around Bokelia to Matlacha Pass looking for bait. After some serious chumming, we had a load of shiners, and were off to the north end of the Sound to fish. The first hole I stopped at produced nothing, but the second hole was the charm. It was full of redfish and snook, and we spent quite a while there before it slowed down. Although I didn't get a count of how many fish were missed on this trip, suffice it to say there were lots of misses. Rich made the comment that the girls usually kicked butt on their fishing trips, and this trip was no exception. Liz, a beautiful, petite brunette, and Brenda, a beautiful, tall, slender brunette, both loved to fish, and kind of stole the show from their boys. The girls caught most of the fish. One of the girls, Liz I think, caught a huge jack crevalle that really gave her a fit. Throughout the morning I heard the word "awesome" mentioned a few times. We pulled back into Uncle Bud's Restaurant with 5 nice redfish and a seven pound snook in the release well. Although we hadn't started fishing until around eleven o'clock because of the bait problems, we made up for lost time and had lots of fun.
Thursday I had Jim Hoban and his brother-in-law Erick from up in Deleware. My good friend Capt. Mark Bess was fishing also, and we ran up to where we'd gotten bait the day before to be greeted with a big surprise; the bait had disappeared. So, it was back over to Captiva Pass in hopes of finding it there. Now, the wind had kicked up to 20 knots out of the southwest. Lovely. It didn't take long at Captiva Pass to get the shiners chummed up. Mark put a load in his well, and by the time he had thrown the net again, and came back to the well, the first load were all floating belly up. Damn! I ran back to check mine and they were all swimming sideways! I quickly kicked on my aerator, and put Jim to stirring them vigorously, and we brought them back. We put some more in the front well, and kept a close eye on them. Mark tried again to keep bait alive, but they just died. We didn't know what to think. Mark had run a night trip just the night before. I'd given him my left over bait at the dock that evening at 6:00 PM. That bait had been in my well all day, and lasted till midnight in Mark's well with no problem. He had a great trip. We suspected that maybe we had some red tide water moving into the bay on the southwest wind, but weren't sure. Our shiners are absolutely magic bait, but they are very fragile. It doesn't take much at all to quickly kill them in the well. The bait we're catching right now is much bigger than we're accustomed to seeing. In fact, it's almost too big, especially for redfishing. When you crowd several hundred of these big baits into a livewell it doesn't take much to send them to shiner heaven. A pump that's not working correctly, bad water, warm water, or too many baits crowed into the well can quickly kill them. Because they're so fragile, I never close the lids on my baitwells after the bait is caught, and I constantly look at them to make sure they're all right. We had eliminated all of the above as the cause, and looking back, I think the problem was jellyfish. There were millions of small jellyfish in the water that morning, and I think Mark had unknowingly dumped lots of them into his well with the bait. They quickly smothered. Not knowing what the problem was at that time we decided to run together for the day, and let me be the bait boat. We went to one of my favorite snook spots this time of year and anchored up. We had immediate and great action for about the first hour or so, and then it stopped like someone had flipped a switch. I don't know how many fish Mark's party missed, but Jim and Eric tangled with 15 snook, and put 5 into the boat before the action was over. We hit quite a few other spots around the north end of the Sound, and it was absolutely dead everywhere we went. I ran into my good friend Rey Rodriguez at one stop, and he had raised a tarpon on fly just after daylight before the wind kicked, and had only caught one redfish since. He's a great guide, too. Back at the docks it was the same story. No one had caught squat that day, so Mark and I went home feeling pretty good about the number of fish our guys had raised. Jim and Eric had no complaints, cause they knew they'd missed a lot of fish they should have gotten to the boat. Well, that's just another reason they call it fishing instead of catching.
Friday, Steve and Patti Lewis were back for a second snook trip. I took them out a couple of years back, but didn't see them last year. They had been blessed with triplets last year, and hadn't taken a vacation. They are a great couple. Steve loves to hunt, fish, and golf, and Patti loves to fish. She got the big snook on the last trip. The wind was still strong out of the southwest. When the wind blows like that it even makes it hard to fold your castnet. The morning started out on the wrong foot (literally), when I lost my balance and stepped off the front deck of my boat right onto my castnet. There was a catfish tangled in the net. I knew he was in there, but as I lost my footing and came down with my left foot onto the net in the floor, I didn't know where he was hiding. Of course, I landed right on him, and drove the dorsal spike right up into my foot. Fortunately, it broke off the fish, and went up into the meaty part of my instep instead of up into bone, or I would have really been in trouble. Steve quickly got out his stainless Swedish pliers, I grabbed my foot and gritted my teeth, Patti hid her eyes, and Steve gave the catfish spike a big pull. I let is bleed into the water for a while to flush out the wound, wrapped it in a towel until it quit bleeding, and finished catching bait. It hurt, but not unbearably so. Once we were on the first snook spot I forgot all about my hurting foot. Steve and Patti had plenty of snook jumping all over the place. By the time the tide quit they had tangled with more than 30 snook, and put 10 in the boat. Steve's biggest was 9 pounds, and he was absolutely thrilled with that fish. Patti had also caught a couple of small trout, and a 6 pound jack. All in all, even with the wind and catfish wound, it was a great morning of fishing. Steve and Patti took a couple of 27 inch snook home for eating. The 9 pounder was released to breed and fight again. It was great to see the Steve and Patti again, and if I know Steve, it won't be long before we're taking out the triplets, all girls.
The last trip of the week went to Steve Ross and Dick Murphy, of Charleston, SC. They bought the trip, which I had donated to the IGFA Banquet, and it was their first snook fishing experience. Steve and Dick are pretty much offshore fishermen who go after tuna, billfish, etc. The wind was now swinging from west to northwest at 15 to 20, and making it very difficult to set up on a hole. Every time I'd get positioned, the wind would shift 30 degrees or so, and blow me off the hole. But, we made it work, and by the end of the tide Steve and Dick had done battle with 28 snook, winning 8 of the battles at boatside. The biggest of the morning was 8 pounds. Dick and Steve got a fishing lesson of sorts. I don't think they expected the level of difficulty they encountered. But, this is light tackle fishing. We're making 100 to 120 ft. casts with 8 pound test. There's a lot of opportunity for line stretch there if you don't handle the hookset correctly. You must wait on a tight line, then reel into the fish as you strike him, to get him hooked. Then too, snook have a lot of thin membrane around their mouths, which will rip very easily, and usually does on the hookset. So, if you don't keep that line absolutely tight during the fight, Mr. Snook will get rid of that hook every time. Hey, 8 hits out of 27 at bats ain't bad numbers for a baseball player. Steve and Dick were a lot of fun. Like most good fishing buddies, they were on each other's cases all morning long. Every time one would miss a fish he'd hear about it, and every time one would land a fish, the other would hear about it. And of course, I was doing some pretty serious coaching, too.
Well, there you have it. It was a great week filled with lots of
action. I don't think there's any turning back now, until next winter
comes.