It's 4:30 in the morning, time to eat a little breakfast and take a jaunt down Interstate 75 to Chokolooskee. On Friday I went to the Sanibel Causeway to catch some fillet mignon for those fish in Choko. I caught about 40 pinfish and white bait to take with us on the trip in about 2 hours. However, the livewell ground went bad while the boat was docked at the house and all of the bait died except for 8 pinfish. Not a big deal we shed problems like water off a water turkeys back. Anyhow we were on our way with 8 pinfish and about 15 shrimp that was left over from the previous days fishing.
We arrived at Choko Island park resort around 6:40, where they promptly told us if we did not have a place to park then we needed to find somewhere else to launch the boat. Off we went to the boat ramp near the Lopez river. Ramp fee was 10$ and we only had to wait for one boat to launch. In the water at 7a.m. to fish the first part of the outgoing tide in the Indian Key area.
It's 7:20 and all three of us (Nelson, Larry , and myself) are baited up with a nice frisky pinfish. On the 1st cast I was broke off by a nice grouper or jewfish, you never can really tell which because they fight the same and are from the same family. Nelson caught a jewfish of 6 pounds and Larry had the hook pull on a decent fish. Pretty good fishing so far; 3 baits= 3 bites. The weather forcast looked outstanding and the tides looked very promising and as did the fishing. We all three baited up again and I was broken off again, Nelson had the hook pull, and Larry was fishing the middle of the creek. Bait situation was starting to look dim with only 3 pinfish left. We used up the last 3 pinfish and caught one snook, a snapper and a catfish on shrimp. Time to head out and go catch some bait.
Now its about 9:30 and we spent an hour on the outside hunting the bait down, eventually we hit it big time and caught 3 well fulls of bait. If I had to guess somewhere in the 500 to 600 range of nice frisky white baits. Off we went to the barge and rocks off of Indian Key. The trip took about 20 minutes to get there and the barge was tough to find even with the depth finder. When we arrived at the barge we saw plenty of bait and plenty of fish on the scale but not one bite for the next 2 hours. We had high expectations of the area and were severely disappointed. I guess you can't catch them all of the time.
We then decided to head back to our little spot and fish it on the incoming tide. The incoming tide happens to be my favorite time to fish the spot, for some reason the fish seem to eat a little better. We proceded to fish it for the next 2 and half to 3 hours. I was able to put one snook of 23 inches and one 8 pound jewfish which was my first ever in the boat. Even a jewfish of only 8 pounds fights like a freight train. That 8 pound jewfish made the trip and day for me. During the rest of the day we had 6 or 7 more fished we missed due to break offs and hook pulls.
In conclusion, the tides were great with tons of water moving and the weather was awesome. We didn't catch as many fish as we would have liked but with a little luck and a few of those hooks staying in the fishes mouths we would have had a great day. All in all just to go fishing in the Everglades is a wonderful thing and to be able to go down there wet a line and catch some fish is priceless.
Until next time may you have line singing, leader fraying, and drag screaming action!!!!
