Are You A Local? Take A Day Off

While driving to Fish Tale Marina a few days ago I crossed over the Little Hickory bridge. At the top there was a young couple standing arm in arm looking east waiting for the sun to come up and start another day. The wind had finally stopped blowing and the air was full of moisture so that everything was shrouded in a mist like fog. I knew the sunrise was going to be a colorful and beautiful one.

We are so lucky to live where we live. Just about everywhere you look there is something to catch the eye. Rosette spoonbills are wading the flats and eagles soar overhead. Dolphins are working the schools of fish for breakfast and the ever present royal terns are diving for bait. It’s too bad we tend to drive right past these moments without stopping.

This is the time of year when we really need to sit back and take a deep breath and enjoy our surroundings. I figure we have just about a month. January will soon be upon us and that will mark the beginning of the winter tourist and snowbird season and we locals won’t have time to do anything but work. It’s a good thing. Our economy depends on this time of year. But it’s very tough on family outings and most of our free time is spent trying to rest up for the next working day.

So get out there and smell the roses. Take a weekday off and go to the beach. I don’t care what beach... just go. Pack a lunch, a good book and a beach chair and plop yourself down and enjoy the view. Turn off the cell phone. You can live for a few hours without voice mail and text messages.

Go to a local weekend festival. There are all kinds of art fairs and events going on in our area and in most cases you can visit a least two in a day. No festivals? No problem. Head over to Matlacha and visit the dozen or so art galleries along Pine Island Road.

Make lunch last forever. Go to your favorite watering hole and have a nice long lunch with your significant other. Arrive around noon and stay until three. Try several small things on the menu accompanied by your favorite libations and be sure to try something you’ve never had before. When you think it’s time to leave, order one more item off the menu.

Go topless. Rent a convertible from one of the car rental outlets at the airport and then cruise the beaches with the top down. Start with a leisurely drive through Sanibel and Captiva Islands and then head over to Fort Myers Beach and cruise the strip. Stop along the way and visit a t-shirt shop and do your best to find something really tacky to put on a shelf when you get home. Something that says “Florida” on it and has sand in it would be perfect.

Last but not least get up before dawn and find a place to watch the sun come up. Take a photo of it and then do the same thing in the late afternoon and watch the sun go down. Put those photos on the fridge or on your desk at work and refer to them often.

To Shrimp Or Not To Shrimp, That Is The Question

As I write this, Southwest Florida is in the midst of its first real cold front of the season. Last night we had a record low of 46 degrees. Just a few days ago we were having record high temperatures in the 90’s. Things sure can switch around weather wise in a hurry. I had to go digging for my Gor-Tex jacket and bibs along with gloves and a hooded sweatshirt. Time to put away the flip flops and get out the boat shoes!

To make things interesting I had a fishing charter right in the middle of the change. Before the front moved in bait was easy to find along the beaches and the bite was steady for days, both in the backcountry and in the Gulf. I guess the fish could sense the change in barometric pressure and knew it was time to fatten up for the impending bad weather.

On my charter day the front had passed through the area. The morning temperature had fallen to 52 degrees and the winds were gusting out of the north at 25 miles an hour, which makes it feel like 40 degrees on the water. The low tide was a scheduled negative low at about 7:30 in the morning but the winds kept pushing the water out until about 10 AM and made for a low tide that exposed sand and oyster bars that I hadn’t seen since last winter. The game plan had to be seriously modified or perhaps not go at all.

My anglers arrived at the marina and I gave them the “lack of bait” and small craft advisory report and asked them how badly they really wanted to do this. The vote was to go if we could, stay in the backcountry out of the wind as much as possible and throw artificials if needed. I decided to give it a go and bought 100 shrimp as a backup plan.

I like fishing with live shiners and threadfin herrings and I often forget just how effective live shrimp can be. I tend to feel that a live swimming bait is going to catch the bigger fish while shrimp will attract only the smaller species. That’s really not true at all. Thinking back over the years, I’ve seen some pretty spectacular catches on shrimp. After all, they are native to our waters and I’m sure they are a major part of most game fish diets. The biggest redfish I ever caught was on a shrimp and jig combo.

We headed off to the north end of Estero Bay. The idea was to fish the many cuts found in the area around the oyster bars. There was so little water due to the low tide and wind that I figured the fish would have to be in those cuts. Heck, there wasn’t enough water anywhere else for them to swim in! The hunch paid off in a big way.

We used nothing but shrimp for bait and rigged them on small yellow 1/4 ounce jig heads. The guys cast them near oyster bar points and in the deepest cuts and then worked them back nice and slow over the bottom. During the course of the day they caught over 30 snook including two slot fish, a couple of nice redfish, keeper trout, a dozen keeper sheepshead, a small gag grouper, scads of mangrove snapper and more than our share of catfish. We had constant action for most of the day and we arrived back at the dock with smiles on our faces and dinner in the box.

The valuable lesson here is don’t be afraid to change gears when things get tough and don’t be afraid to put live shrimp in the well as a go-to bait. As we move further and further into the winter months live shrimp should become part of your game plan. They area easy to get and easy to use.

Best of luck!

Capt. Rob Modys
SoulMate Charters

Working the Back Country

Fishing in the back country of Estero Bay has been great. I've been lucky enough to spend time with a lot of return clients and that makes my job a bit easier. I know what they expect and I can focus on making it happen.

Neil Eisner joined me for 4 days. We tried to hunt for tarpon but the wind blew a bit too hard and the fish were tough to find. The first day was spent on the outside and we eventually wound up near May Reef. We caught some nice grouper and lost a bunch of big fish. They had a bad habit of grabbing the bait and then heading for the rocks! We also lost a small grouper to a very large barracuda.

While all four days were memorable I think day two was the most fun. When Neil got to the dock he told me he had never gotten a back country slam. It consist of a snook, redfish and trout all caught on the same day. I told him that I didn't think that getting the snook and the trout would be a problem but the redfish was another issue. You see, redfish were in the midst of a disappearing act and I hadn't SEEN one in over a week.

We began the day by catching a trout and a snook in less than half an hour. So far everything was going pretty much like I thought it would. The mission now was to find Mr. Red. Long story short... I hit 7 different areas and we caught fish in each and every one of them, but no reds.

Toward the end of the trip I decided to pull into an unnamed cove on an unnamed island. I'd never fished the area before but it just sort of looked right. After casting a couple of baits up near the mangrove edge Neil hooked up with a big fish. It pulled a lot of line off the reel and did it's best to run back into the bushes. Suddendly it rolled up near the surface and the unmistakable copper color of a redfish reflected sunlight. I told Neil, "You've got your red and it's a big one!" He fought it like a pro and after a 10 minute battle brought a 31 inch redfish to boatside. After we got a couple of photos and exchanged "high-fives" we released the fish. Neil finally had his slam!

Most of us that guide or work on the water have our own names for areas that we fish. It's a way of identifing a special area that has produced a memorable catch. The spot where we caught the redfish is now called "Neil's Cove".

Tarpon, Tarpon and More Tarpon

Wow, the past few days have been a blast!!! I've been fishing the near shore waters off of Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel and the tarpon have been seriously on the feed. Once located it doesn't take long for the first hookup and they are big boys! Most of the tarpon are over 100 pounds and we landed a few that were easily near 150 pounds.

My most memorable trip was with Sue and Rob Phelan. They are locals and this was their first tarpon adventure. They managed to hook up with 4 huge fish but were unable to bring one to boat side. Sue said that was probably best! She expressed what many of us feel when going after the silver king. The beginning of the battle is the most fun. There's nothing in fishing like the hookup and then the initial jumps of a tarpon, especially when the first jump is right next to the boat!

One of Sue's fish did just that. It exploded straight up out of the water off the stern of the boat, shaking it's head and throwing water and bits of bait everywhere. Sue screamed out loud like she was on a roller coaster ride at Disney! The fish crashed back into the water and then proceeded to do 3 more fantastic jumps before blasting off for Mexico. After fighting the fish for 10 minutes or so she turned the rod over to her husband, Rob. He worked the fish for a few minutes and then one of those bad things happened that's usually associated with tarpon fishing... the brand new Quantum Cabo reel blew up! I later found out that one of the center gears threw a tooth and that ruined several other gears in the process. Needless to say, when the reel locked up we lost the fish. Afterward Sue told me it really didn't matter. She was so juiced on adrenalin her hands were still shaking almost an hour later. Welcome to tarpon fishing!

Sharks, Sharks and More Sharks

It was another fun day out there with the toothy creatures! Paul Stakowicz and his friend David joined me for a near shore Gulf trip. The idea was to get mackerel for dinner and we succeeded. We had five in the cooler in less than 30 minutes. We then caught a couple more and cut them up for bait and chum. It didn't take long for the sharks to show up. The one in the photo is a blacktip that I'd estimate at 5 to 6 feet long. It took David about 15 minutes to land. We released him so he could grow up. :-)

Fishing Report May 11th, 2009

The fishing has been fantastic! Summer weather seems to be here to stay. It's been in the 90's each day and very little rain. I'm actually looking forward to a bit of rainfall. Things are very dry here right now.

I'm still getting on lots of snook and some really nice trout along with few redfish. The real fun has been out in the Gulf in 16 to 20 feet of water. There are lots of sharks! We've been catching blacktips, lemons, bonnetheads, and bull sharks with a few going over 50 lbs. Fun, fun! The photos are of Todd Drew hooked up with a nice 5 foot blacktip.

Capt. Rob

Fishing Report May 6th, 2009

What a great morning on the water! I fished with the Biedlingmaier family from Wisconsin today and the request was to go after sharks. I must confess, it's been awhile since I was asked specifically to go after the toothy creatures. Since the winds finally layed down a bit we headed out into the Gulf and anchored up in 18 feet of water just a few miles off the beaches of Fort Myers. The sharks were there and hungry! I used cut threadfins as chum and it wasn't long before the first fish was on. The final count was 10 sharks on the line with 5 to the boat. The landed fish were 3 blacktips and 2 lemon sharks with one of the lemons going 35 pounds. The group also caught a couple of big spanish mackerel. Fun was had by all!