Capt. Rey's Fishing Report

This area is dedicated to providing weekly fishing reports on trips
and will include information on the fishing conditions, types of fish
seen and caught, tackle used, flies that are working and other things
of interest.
I will  include special reports on upcoming events such as the TARPON , REDFISH , and SNOOK season, the best time to fish for particular species, etc. This will allow you to better plan your fishing trips to Southwest Florida. You can also visit my archive reports.   If you have any comments about my reports you can either email me or comment in my guestbook.

Week Ending ,  February 27th , 2001

A warm trend came upon Southwest Florida this week. Snook joined the Redfish and Seatrout that has been our main targets during the winter months. The week started with a couple of flyfishing trips. The Redfish were as usual showing well during the lower stages of the tide. Along with the Reds there were some Snook on the flats but the windy conditions early in the week made it tough to catch this fish.

By the middle of the week Cameron Campbell joined me. Cameron is a regular customer of mine. He is originally from Texas but now he owns a piece of paradise on Sanibel Island. I called Cameron and told him about the great Snook fishing available under the lights of many local canals. We met around 3:00am and headed for the Snook honey hole. With fly rods in hand we quietly approached a light, we could see 30 to 40 Snook layed up just below the surface selectively eating the shrimp that the current was feeding them. After trying several different flies we found a small shrimp pattern that worked. Cameron was casting up tide and letting the fly be carried by the current. After many follows, a Snook was finally fooled and a short but intense fight followed. We had our hand on our first Snook of the night. We had a tough time believing this fish attitude since many followed the fly but we only landed two Snook.

After a beautiful sunrise we headed for the flats, Redfish was our target but some nice trout would not hurt. We slowly cover the flats looking for any signs of Reds; we also made some cast to any deep depressions along the flats. Cameron landed some nice Seatrout, we sight fished them over sand. After catching Snook and Seatrout, we only needed a Red for the “SLAM”. Cameron finally had a hookup, a nice 8lb Red ate his shrimp imitation fly and headed away from us in a hurry. A nice run followed, the line was slack and we lost our chance at a slam.

The next day I had angler, Cliff Critch, his son Matt and friend Sean Tremblay. The gang is from Billerica, Mass. They were here on vacation enjoying the warm Florida weather and were looking for some relaxing fishing. After a slow morning bite, the wind was shifting directions to the south and the tide was coming in nicely. I had caught some nice sardines in the morning so we were looking for some hungry Snook to make lunch of them. We moved to a cut in between islands where the strong current gave the Snook an unfair advantage over the sardines. Matt was the first one to hook-up; a nice Snook was jumping out of the water realizing that his lunch was not what he had expected. Sean followed not far behind Matt with several small Snook.

As the tide kept rising, we moved to another spot where the Reds should have joined the Snook and Seatrout. Cliff caught some nice Seatrout while Matt and Sean each caught several nice Snook along with more Seatrout and a Redfish.

Other trips also produced some Reds along with more Snook and many Seatrout. Fishing is definitely picking up, as the water gets warmer, even some Tarpon had been showing up but not yet in fishable numbers.

Until next week,
Tight lines,
Capt. Rey

Seats are limited, so give me a call, or drop me an email, and let's GO FISHING !