Fish have been more plentiful than people. But that's always the way it is this time of year.
Fall is my favorite time to fish. It's a time when the water and air are cooling, and the fish begin to feed in anticipation of winter.
I recently headed down to Pine Island Sound for a day of fly fishing. Most of you who know me are aware of my passion for fly fishing. It's something I've done for more than 30 years now. Whenever I get the chance, I take the fly rods and leave the spinning rods at home.
I launched just before daylight and made a short paddle to the shallow grass flats. To be perfectly honest, not much was moving. I was looking for redfish.
I paddled into the shallows and looked around the mangroves. Again, not much. The breeze was light and from the east. But it was enough for me to make a few casts while drifting. I caught a couple of decent spotted seatrout on a white snook fly.
When the sun got up high enough to light the flat, I began casting into sand holes. Using a 6-weight rod, sinktip line and olive-and-white Clouser Deep Minnow, I began hooking fat mangrove snapper on nearly every cast. Before the bite was over, I caught and released 25 snapper. The largest was about 14 inches, but all were fat as they could be.
In addition, I caught eight spotted seatrout to 20 inches, a couple of obligatory ladyfish and one 15-inch pompano.
Three days later, I returned for an all-day trip with Hank Guetzlaff of Apollo Beach. We were think snapper, trout and pompano, but the snook got in the way.
Actually, the tide was perfect for tailing reds. But there just weren't many redfish around. By 1 p.m., all we had to show for our efforts was four small snook.
It was time to look around. I found an opening and paddle into to it to take a look. It opened up into a small bay, and there were all sorts of snook busting glass minnows along the mangroves.
In a little more than an hour, we caught and released 25 snook. Most were typically small, but one went 27 inches. Most of the fish came on a Gurgler. We caught others on poppers and D.T. Specials.
