Florida report

[schoolie monster]

My dad and I met up in Naples a couple weeks ago and fished two days out of Goodland, which is the northern end of the 10K island area.

The backcountry is absolutely fantastic down there. Endless mangrove shorelines. This was our first trip to that area, but as usual, we had major wind issues. The nice thing about the backcountry is you can get in the lee of hundreds of islands and you can at least escape the wind.

The water gets pretty mucked up though. We also didn't get to see what fishing on the outside in the gulf would be like. I guess all the grass flats and points are really good.

Our guide liked the higher tides for tarpon, but it wasn't going to be very good for the snook and redfish. Too much water allows the fish to get way back into roots of the mangroves where you can't get to them.

Man, the tarpon thing just wasn't happening. We saw a few, including some 80-100lb class fish, but they were not too interested. We were in the middle of a front and a big wind change and that was probably a factor. Their cold fronts are different than ours, but the fish seem to be alot more sensitive.

We had a couple shots and one really good cast on a big fish. He looked like he was gonna eat my dad's lure, but at the last second he bailed.

Fishing for the other species wasn't much better. We didn't see alot of fish and when we did, they didn't eat even though my dad and I fished and cast pretty well overall.

Dad did OK the first day with a couple decent snook around 22" and a smallish 3# red. I jumped two snook, had a nice one hit that I just didn't get a hook in and had a big redfish follow my jerkbait but never hit. I woulda liked to have gotten that one, since it had the head the size of a football. I finally got off the skunk with a small snook towards the end of the day.

Day 2 came with higher winds and fewer fish chances. It was tough, but we we saw most of the tarpon and my dad's shot was that 2nd morning. I had an easy shot at a snook, threw a good cast and he looked like he was gonna jump all over the lure, but again, just didn't.

Finally, we found a nice red in a shallow bay. After 3 or 4 good casts, the fish moved off a bit. We got on him again, and I thru the worst cast of the sequence and the fish jumped all over the thing. It was the biggest red I have caught around 9#s.

We did blow a good shot at a 9-10# snook later on. We saw the fish and I refused to throw at him. I wanted my dad to get a nice fish and he was in the middle of a loop in his braid and weeds on his jig. The guide was flippin' out 'cause it was probably the best shot we had all trip. He was cool, but he was like, "someone has to get a cast on a fish like that." Especially when its that slow, I agree, but it was more important to me to let my dad take the shot.

We hit a couple deeper, current spots to end the day and we each picked up a trout to complete the backcountry slam for the trip.

It was alot of fun and our guide was very good. I've fished FL enough to know that I like what he was trying to do and he was working really hard for us. The fishing was just plain off and fish we saw weren't aggressive. We took a longer trip this time and visited some friends and did a lot of pool and beach time.

Here's that fish.