SW FL-Bonita Beach: Nice Redfish Action; Snapper, Flounder, Spanish

The first part of the week brought lots of rain, and not just the familiar afternoon thunderstorms; it rained early mornings, into late evenings. It was mid-week before I got out fishing. Wednesday, 8/13, I fished Estero Bay with Robert & Roberta Dulberg and their children, Daniel, ten, and Rebecca, six. Rebecca was a little leery of boats in general, but quickly adapted and had a great time--especially when she got to see a porpoise and a manatee close-up.

The group caught two keeper mangrove snapper and released smaller snapper, sheepshead, cravalle jack, trout and ladyfish. Robert caught two nice redfish--one, a bull at 28 1/2 inches, was released, and the other at 25 1/2 inches went home for dinner!

Robert and Daniel fished again with me Thursday, joined by Robert’s brother, Mark, and his children. This time we headed near-shore to the reefs and fished there as long as we could, but it was a little sloppy out there and more than Daniel could handle after a while. So we eventually moved in to fish off the channel. We ended up with a flounder and five keeper mangrove snapper and we released smaller snapper.

Kevin Port, son Jake, and friends Dave and John fished with me 18 miles west of New Pass, on Friday morning. Using live shrimp, we caught over a hundred mangrove snapper that were just short of keeper size for federal waters so we had to release those, along with some big ladyfish. But we did catch five keeper mangrove snapper, three keeper yellowtail snapper, three Spanish mackerel to 24 inches and porgies.

The photo shown is of mother-daughter anglers Kay and Julia Ware with a red grouper caught on shrimp and released on a recent near-shore trip to the artificial reefs.