March 5 2008 Pine Island Sound

Finally, we made it into March.... I think old Mother Nature must really like January, because she keeps giving us little shots of cold wind almost every week. Now, the last few days, she tried to fool us and blow out of the south. North or south, either one makes for tough sight fishing. Even with inconsistent weather, a lot of fish seem to be moving out of the back water anticipating the warmer water temps.
The beach fishing has been a little hit and miss with some macs and albies popping up. Some wishful thinking snook have all ready shown up around the passes and on the beaches. Must be the smaller males... Those young bucks always seem to have one thing on they're mind....Oh yeah, they do eat, too.
Trout are old faithful and just keep on chewing. We have caught them in shallow grass, deep grass, potholes even a few way back in some deep, back country holes. Regardless, find some clean water with good turtle grass , lets say 3-6 feet of water where the wind hasn't blown it to a froth. Start casting your favorite trout lure, fly or bait and have fun. These fish are so active right now they will eat almost anything.
A good friend and fisherman John Rappold called me this morning . He said he caught a 23" trout working a jig over grass before it made it to his dinner table, he found a 7" mangrove branch or root in it's belly.
Red fish ..... well lets just say WOW! They are coming out of the ..... Well, I don't know where all of them are coming from but we are catching some nice fish. When water temps get into the low 70's and the winds not blowing. Boing up come the tails and on goes the feed bags.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of fishing with one of my fellow Vermonters Bill Berry. Now if you remember March 4th it blew like crazy all morning and a good part of the day. I ran from Boca Grande to Pineland Marina to pick Bill up. NOT fun... I wasn't sure I was going to have any usable rods by the time I got down there. My oil cap and plug both came off and popped out. What a mess!
Bill looked a little worried but hopped in and asked, "Which side should I sit on so I won't get soaked?"
Well everything started slow. Bill prefers to fish all artificial whenever possible. With the wind and clouds, sight fishing was almost impossible but we stuck to are game plane. We started with a surface plug, some swirls but no takers. So I had Bill change to a jig head with a 5" root beer and gold flake jerk bait..... 2nd cast ....boom a 10lb redfish crushed it. We made a few more moves and Bill kept on catching. Most of the fish were not along the flooding shore lines , but off 20 to 100 feet. The were laying in 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 feet of water. We couldn't see them, so we cast to any sign of surface activity. At the end of a windy drizzly day, we had landed around 25 redfish, hooked some snook and caught a hand full of large trout. Not bad for a crappy weather fishing day. Then it was drop Bill off, put on all my rain gear and prepare to lose some fillings on the nasty ride back to Boca. It really wasn't that bad, but I'm glad I had put on my rain gear.
It should just keep on getting warmer and the fish should start to feed more often. I hope you can all get out soon.Enjoy the beautiful water we live near and catch some of these great fish.
One last note snook season is open. That means you can keep one per person.....but you DON'T have to. I keep fish sometimes but release most everything. I like to tell my fishermen to keep only what the will eat tonight, then it's fresh and nothing goes to waste.

Thanks,
Capt. Jamie Allen
941-628-9031

P.S
If you can try to take a kid fishing (big or small)