Had the chance to fish today, with 2 old friends from my high school days, out of Estero Bay in Fort Myers Florida. The 3 of us left Weeks fish camp about 9 am or so with several dozen shrimp and high expectations. Unfortunately the calm conditions I had hoped for were blown away by the stiff breeze that greeted us as we idled our way out of the channel. The tide was still fairly low and the water was milky from the stiff breeze but I still wanted to look for some live bait to add to the shrimp in the livewell. We found diving birds at several locations but had no luck finding any whitebait, aka scaled sardines. There were quite a few pelicans at the bridge at Big Carlos Pass so we threw the 8' castnet several times, picking up a few threadfin herring to add to the livewell. With that we headed in search of FISH. With a still very low tide we had a tough time finding any bites early. A decent jack and a small snook started things off. After working quite a bit of shoreline in some new areas Andy finally hooks up with a nice redfish.
With not much going on we head to another area we've done well at before. I start with one of the few large threadfins we have and it gets hammered pretty quickly. A nice sized redfish knocked it and followed it out of the water before it grabbed it and started running. Unfortunately when I set the hook the red was gone. As I reel up the slack the line comes tight again so I set the hook again. This time I get a solid hookup and fairly quickly get the biggest spotted seatrout I've ever caught at 26" to the boat and into the net.
We continued to work a lot of water with the trolling motor and managed a couple of other small redfish and decent jacks. We then went looking for some trout on the grass flats, but the howling wind and dirty water made us decide to call it a day.
