SW FL-Bonita Beach: Good Variety Offshore, Snook & Reds Inshore, Totugas-Bound!

On a catch-and-release trip to the artificial reefs off Bonita Beach on Tuesday, 5/27, long-time customers Pat Fitzgerald and sons, Jimmy, Tommy and Peter, along with friend, Brendon, caught a smorgasbord of fish on live shrimp. We had steady action all morning, and released two keeper-sized pompano, lots of whitings, lots of gag grouper shorts to 19 ½ inches, seven keeper-sized flounder and lots of grunts and keeper-sized mangrove snapper. I don’t know how many fish we caught in all, but a couple of Pat’s young sons were keeping count of their catches and each had between 30 and 40.

Friday morning, fishing with Bill and Debby Wright in central Estero Bay, we caught two keeper redfish just under 20 inches and released a nice 26 inch snook (see photo) along with mangrove snapper, cravalle jack and a stingray. The snook ran the length of the boat and was a good fight on 8 pound test.

The other photo shown is of a 16 inch flounder caught on shrimp on a recent reef trip.

I am fishing the Dry Tortugas this week and hope to have some "Tortuga Tales" by my next post.