Posted by Captain Bill Curtis on Friday, January 11, 2013 Under: Fort Myers
Tuesday’s trip was a 6 hour charter with first timer Paul. He received the guided trip as a Christmas present from his wife, nice! We headed out for the 6 hour charter right on time at 8am from the Carl Johnson boat ramp at Lover’s Key. He said he hadn’t fished salt water much but he had no trouble working with the 12# spin tackle we started with, catching small sheepshead, snapper, ladyfish, and a decent slot trout. With the tide incoming but still fairly low we fished several areas around Big Carlos Pass, picking away a few small fish at each spot, losing a suspected big snook, and landing a small one on a lure. Next we headed to beaches of Lover’s Key to hunt for scaled sardines for bait that were in the area the week before, but not on that day. So we were off to fish some secluded mangrove shorelines next with the livewell full of nice shrimp I had purchased earlier. We found some activity and Paul got a nice big drag screaming jack crevalle for a great battle and a good feel for the power of the salt water fish we have available. We covered quite a bit of water without too much going on, but finally found 1 good redfish.
Then we found some cleaner water with current and ran across a few more redfish, with some nice big ones in the mix. Before we knew it our time was up, and it was back to the ramp to clean and bag a nice catch of trout and redfish, to end another great day in Estero Bay.
