SW FL-Bonita Beach: It Takes Two to Hold this Cuda; Bull Reds

Tuesday morning, 5/6, I fished Estero Bay with Paul and Rebecca Miller. The tide was slow coming in. We fished the tree lines, which is challenging, especially for novice anglers, and we lost one nice redfish that got tangled in the trees and broke the line. Rebecca caught a nice 14 inch sheepshead and we also caught a keeper mangrove snapper. We released smaller snapper and sheepshead.

Gary McDermott and friends fished the Gulf with me on Wednesday, in 38-46 feet out of New Pass, with live shrimp. We caught five hogfish, one of which was a beauty at about 18 inches but, unfortunately, a hungry barracuda bit that one off right at the head as we were reeling it in. We had one other keeper hog and released the other three. We also caught a keeper mangrove snapper and released nine others that were small, along with short red grouper. We caught a keeper triggerfish and eight pretty nice whitebone porgies, all in the two-to-three pound range.

Greg & Helen Bauer and Tara Barnes fished at the reefs with me on Thursday morning. It was too rough to get our much further than that, but we did okay reef-fishing, with a 12 inch flounder and some grunts for filleting. The rest of our catches were pure sport and included two goliath grouper at twenty pounds and thirty-five pounds and a forty-pound barracuda (see photo below). We released those, along with small snapper and gag grouper shorts. We caught the big guys on blue runners and the rest on shrimp.

John Keener and son, Chris, fished Estero Bay with me on a windy Monday morning, 5/12. We released two snook about 18 inches, sand bream, small snapper and a big redfish about 32 inches (see photo below). We were broken off by another bull red along the mangrove tree line.

Thursday, I fished a catch-and-release trip in Estero Bay with Ron Constantini and Rich Staubauch. We used live shrimp to catch three slot reds and lost two bull reds in the mangroves. We also released keeper-sized mangrove snapper, two undersized (and out-of-season) snook and a cravalle jack.