A fishing first for Chris

Up really early this morning to get on the water for some fishing action.  Days are still getting too hot for fish to be active, so early or late in the day is preferred.  Storms have been rolling through each day, but seem later than usual.  Loaded up the yak and said goodbye to Cindy for a solo adventure.  Appeared to be one of only a handful of people driving around at 5am on a Sunday.  Launched the yak at the same park that we visited on Friday.
Out into open water around 6am.  Still quite dark in the sky as the sun isn’t rising until around 7am.  Made my way north with additional light slowly building in the eastern sky.  Impressive stars to be seen with a clear sky and minimal light pollution from fort myers.  Paused for about 10 minutes once arriving near a previous fishing hotspot.  Could hear the mullet starting to awaken and something larger beginning to chase them around the oyster bars.  The outgoing tide was underway, so the oyster bars were just beginning to appear.
Stood up on the yak to start casting a top water plug.  Not much more exciting in fishing than seeing a fish thrash a top water lure in low light conditions.  On my second cast, kaboom!  Pulled in my first snook ever!  Had to maneuver a bit around the oysters, but got it in and released it successfully.  Snook season just opened up on 9/1, but it’s a very small range of sizes that can be kept.  Major freezes a few years ago killed a bunch of snook, so they had kept the season closed completely in southwest Florida until this year.

Ended the morning with 3 undersize snook and a hefty jack crevalle.  Missed something really big around 9am..likely a legal snook.  A great morning to be on the water.  I was heading home when most folks were just getting started around 10am.