My last report was for the day before the season opened, this one will cover the first week of snook season, fishing out of Flamingo down in Everglades National Park....
Even though it's still very hot and rainy it really feels like fall when snook season finally opened on 1 September. We let them be the first two days then went after them starting on the 3rd... Finding bait was a bit difficult at first but the fishing was on once we finally had a few baits in the well. Our first snook of the day was a solid 32" upper slot fish and a real handful right next to heavy mangrove cover near the Shark River. Local angler, Dave Blumberg, stayed on top of the fish and we invited it home for dinner...
The biggest problem we faced at the first spot was the large number of very hungry sharks right where the snook were... In short order we hooked them from five or six feet long all the way up to unstoppable (even on our heaviest rod spooled up with 65lb braid). The good news is that not one of our snook got eaten, the bad news is they didn't get to most of the baits... At any rate it was a great start to the day. We worked a few other spots, found lots of smaller fish - jacks, ladyfish, snapper, even one nice sized spanish mackeral but had to work to find a few more snook. Our next good snook spot held nice fish, but right in the middle of several downed trees. At that spot the snook, grouper, etc. won all the battles - many times before we could even get into the fight they were back in, under, and around something to break off. Those kind of results will change later in the month when the bait holding along shorelines is a bit bigger. Dave did score with a big jack crevalle that took a lure meant for a snook. That fish was well over 10lbs and might have gone 15... We finished off that first day fishing for gag grouper in a river spot. The fish were there but we couldn't seem to stay with the bigger fish. The best we did were fish just under the slot size at 23 1/2 " long, no matter how we measured them... Here's a sample.
We left them biting and I planned to visit them the following day.
The next day I had Matt Santamauro, his young son Mattie, and his friend Joe aboard. After some work to find bait, and finding lots of small to medium sized tarpon that weren't hungry at all... we headed for a good snook spot but were disappointed. The fish were there alright but we managed to jump off four nice snook in a row while landing one small one on a lure.
. I suspect our baits were a little on the large side. Once again the spot was quickly overrun by every kind and size of shark as well as what I thought were some large goliath grouper (jewfish for you old timers). The goliaths, if that's what they were picked up our baits and hammered them back into a heavily tangled shoreline... We got the same treatment at the next spot. Finally we headed inside a bit to do some serious grouper fishing. That day the spot held goliaths up to and well over the forty pound range. Here's a photo of the biggest we got to the boat. At over 36" long I estimated it right at 40lbs...
Joe really took a beating working that fish in since it wrapped up around the motor, pulled him all around the boat, and just did what every goliath of any size does - fight you all the way from hookup to the boat... We went on to hook many more at the same spot. Some we were successful with, others took us to school... Here's a photo of young Mattie with his first goliath...
It was just the right size for a young angler. I'll bet not too many kids from New York have ever caught one of these at his age....
The outlook for the next few weeks remains the same... if we don't get visited with a hurricane the fishing will just get better and better until that first cold night in October. The fishing will be good then after that first cold night - but the big tarpon won't be around....
Tight lines
Bob LeMay