I had four charters this week and only had to reschedule Mondays due to cold weather, dirty water and 25knt winds. Tuesday I fished Estero Bay and pilchards were easily netted offshore. The hard ENE winds didn't let the water come in much and I was limited to where I could fish. The water also went from 87 on Friday to 69.2 on Tuesday. I knew the snook bite would be off so I concentrated on some deeper rocks walls and caught a good amount of gag grouper to 20". We also got a nice 27" redfish and some bluefish fishing the bushes. Wednesday I was back down in Naples and again pilchards were easily netted. I started out in one of the local passes and didn't leave for two hours. I was the only boat fishing it and we easily caught 40 snook to 27". It was one of he best bites I have seen in there all year. I left them biting to try and find some trout in the deeper mangrove shorelines and couldn't get away from the snook. We finally got a nice keeper right under 33" on a big pilchard. Today I fished Naples again and it was another great day on the water. I had a regular client on the boat Tom McKenna and he put a hurting on the snook in the pass. He easily caught 20 nice fish in about an hour. We made our way into the backwaters where he caught snook to 31" and a mess of mangrove snapper.
