Before I left for the 10,000 islands last Friday I did some fishing here on Thursday with my friend Miguel Pichardo came in from Utah for bike week. We hit a couple of spots looking for some action and found some trout in the 16” to 17” range. Miguel caught his on live shrimp and I caught mine using a bomber plug, firetiger color. It’s good to see that the action is beginning to pick up. I suspect with the warm weather we’ve had this past week that fishing should vastly improve in the coming weeks.
Let me tell you a little about my snook fishing trip to the 10,000 islands. It’s about a 5-5 1/2 hour ride, I-95 south to I-4 to I-75 south to 27 to Everglades City. I arrived about 10:30 am and met my buddy Nick who lives in Miami and fishes the islands about once a month. We checked into our room and loaded my tackle on his boat and headed to the ramp. We ran about 30 miles to the first spot and had no luck. The tide was not in our favor that afternoon as it was slack low. We decided to head to some open water in the gulf and fish for some trout while waiting for the tide to change. We fished in 6 ft of water and began connecting with trout. The trout there average about 16” with a large one going about 22”. We headed back inshore after the tide switched but still had no luck with snook. We did get more trout, jacks and ladyfish. We called it a day as the sun started to set and the gnats started biting.
At dinner that night we got some info from fishing buddies of Nicks that the snook were deeper into the backwaters but were difficult to catch.
The next morning we ran about 60 miles to a spot on the outside that Nick had done well at in the past. We spooked about five good size snook but couldn’t hook up. We went into Lostmans river and had no luck there so we ran to Rogers river. We worked a shallow creek while waiting for the tide to change and I landed an 18” snook. We the rising tide we went deep into the backcountry and hit a few spots with no luck. The last place we stopped we finally began to spot some snook, you could see them in the clear tannic water. I landed one about 10”, threw at another and when he turned directions the line dragged across his back and he bolted out of there. I spooked another when I blind cast to the shoreline. I must have hit the fish with my jig because the water exploded and the fish bolted. Nick did manage a couple of 20” snook using a Berkley gulp shrimp. In all we covered about 120 miles that day and didn’t catch a legal snook but it didn’t matter much as it is such a beautiful area.
On the home front Roy’s Bait House reports bluefish up to 11 ½ lbs in the surf along with whiting, pompano, and sheepshead. Mike Salzer fished the backwaters for a 4.04 lb and a 7.05 lb redfish. Greg Zvierko had flounder, reds and trout in the ICW. Gary Crawford went offshore for porgys and triggerfish.