Finally got our first shot at cooler weather this week and boy did it interrupt fishing for a few days. It really wasn't that cold but it felt like it on the water after such a long stretch of hot weather. Plus the wind, a strong northeast wind blew hard pushing water out of the bays and making for rough fishing. By the end of the week the winds began to settle down and fishing slowly got back on track.
On my boat this week we cancelled our trips for the first part of the week. Tried to go on Monday, went out to get bait at sunrise and quickly realized it just wasn't worth it with the wind, cold and no water. So we rescheduled. By the latter half of the week the weather was better and fishing wasn't bad. We caught limits of really fat trout from sixteen to eighteen inches over grass flats in five to seven feet of water off the east end of Bokeelia. Trout season is coming to a close at the end of the month, so we better get them while we can. The bite was really good over the last few hours of the falling tide in areas adjacent to sand bars. Ladyfish, a few mackerel and the largest bluefish I have seen in awhile were also caught from these areas. All were caught on live shiners (pilchards) free lined on a 3/0 Owner circle hook.
We also tried a couple grouper holes in Charlotte Harbor and put one gag that measured twenty-four inches in the boat. We caught another half dozen shorts with a couple that were painfully close to legal and lost a couple bigger fish that broke us off. All were hooked on four to six inch live pinfish. I have also heard a few reports of bigger gags caught by anglers trolling in the Sound and a short distance off the beaches, that's a good sign they are moving in.
It's such a challenge to pull a big grouper from his shallow water hole inshore. When they are here and hungry it's a blast to try and yank one from his hole and very addictive fishing!
Although our weather is back up to near ninety degrees our water temperature dropped significantly over the week. This should help the bite as the water was too hot for this late in the year. Bait fish are still plentiful and the game fish should start feeding heavily on them before they eventually are pushed south. I anticipate a good last week of trout season, plus snook and redfish should be active and more grouper will hopefully migrate inshore.
