With the holiday weekend approaching and the whole family having a day off together, we made grand plans for my better half’s first fishing trip in over a month. The plan was to head down to Chockoloskee, and fish some near shore wrecks, as well as look for tarpon in Everglades National Park. Well, that plan went down the drain as my better half heard forecasts of 40mph winds associated with a cold front pushing through South Florida into Friday morning. With that, our hopes were that the bad weather would push through early enough Friday morning, that we could fish closer to home out of Estero Bay, as there is a boat ramp all of about 15 minutes away. The forecast was actually spot on as the lines of storms swept through during the morning hours with some impressive squall lines. We watched the radar closely, and as soon as it looked like the rain was ending, I loaded up the boat, and we hit the water about 11am. Although high tide wasn’t expected for another few hours, the storm had pushed the water a foot or two above the high tide line already.
 
The wind was still blowing fairly stiffly and the water was stirred to a nice murky color of creamed coffee, so we didn’t even bother looking for bait, as we had several dozen shrimp in the livewell. We ran straight to an area I knew would be somewhat protected from the wind, where the fishing has been pretty darn good lately. The bite was pretty nonexistent to start. I had a nice big trout up to the boat, that shook it’s self free before we could get it in, but that was about it. With that I figured we better go look for some bait to try to inspire some fish to eat, and we headed to Big Carlos Pass. There was no bait to be found, but the 2 kids got to pursue one of their favorite pursuits of playing and swimming at the beach, while mom and dad got to relax and enjoy the now clearing and beautiful day. Before too long we headed to a totally different area, found some clearer water, a finally outgoing tide, and a few fish.

Dawn proceeded to catch several snook up to around 20 inches or so, and I saw a couple groups of monster size snook cruising the shoreline we were stalking. Even with a pretty good cast I only spooked them with the small lure I was throwing, made we really wish we had found some live bait for the day.
 
Each of the kids caught a small redfish to get the skunk off of everybody on the boat and I believe a snooklet or 2. Of course the bite was getting better as the afternoon progressed, and we had to leave the fish chewing for our next engagement on the first day of the holiday weekend.