It's Wednesday the 27th of March 2002 at 8:30 in the morning. The forecast called for clear skies and a low incoming tide. Winds out of the SW 5 mph.
Wednesday's Charter was with Ted Barnett, his brother Brent Barnett and his son Christopher. I met them at Four Winds resort on Bokeelia. Ted wanted to take out the new Maverick they had just purchased. The boat was for his son Christopher and they wanted some driving as well a some fishing pointers. Fortunately for me they had already caught a well full of frisky nice white baits. Which made the later start we were getting a nonfactor.
We headed off to the sound and boy was the water shallow. We were racing along a shallow flat when we started to see big wakes of redfish and snook feeding up on the flat. At first we were not able to put the boat down, but then we found a deep hole to sit down in. Next we anchored and attempted to catch some of those large fish we saw. Unfortunately we could not get close enough to the fish in the Maverick. The water was just to shallow for a 20ft flats boat. We saw so many fish but we just could not get within a 100 yards or so of them. We eventually decided to plane up out of a hole in the flat. Then scooted towards the back of an island we had been doing well at. However, the tide played a trick on me and the water was even skinnier than the previous flat. We had to lay the boat down in a hole in the middle of two islands. We began to chum a few white bait here and there and then we began to fish. Good thing for us we managed a snook, trout, redfish slam out of the hole. Most of the snook, trout, and redfish were small. Nevertheless, it was still a good start to the day. After the tide had risen several inches we decided to go to a grouper spot I had done well at in the past. We boated several smaller sized grouper and one flounder that was basketball sized shook the hook loose at the side of the boat.
We left that hole and went to a spot a friend said he had been doing very well at earlier in the week. However, the snook were not there but the grouper were. We managed to get two keepers to the boat and we also had several fish bust us off. After an hour or so it was time to try a spot that had been very productive recently. The snook did not want to play for some reason. We then decided to fish a spot Brent and Chris caught two keepers at the day before. The Maverick did well there, we boated one keeper snook and around 20 snook altogether in just that spot. In 30 minutes or so the bite began to slow, we decided to head to Captiva Pass and see what was there. The fishing was rather good, we lost two large 30 plus incher snook there and caught several large trout. It was getting late in the day and darkness was closing in, so we decided to head for camp.
I believe the whole group had a great time and the fishing was pretty good. The total was near 30 snook for the day, a couple of reds, 2 keeper grouper and numerous trout. The weather and the temperature were also wonderful. I can't wait to get back out there.
Until next time may you have line singing, leader fraying, and drag screaming action!!!!
