Fishing Bonanza

Up early again today and did a quick check out the front window for the weather conditions.  Looked much better as the wind had laid down after blowing strong the last couple days.  Dressed, packed, loaded the yak and headed back up to Matlacha.  Tides looked good as well, with the outgoing tide starting at 745am.  Peddled my way north up to the same area I had fished on Sunday.  Some bands of rain on the horizon with a mostly cloudy sky.  Threw top water again the entire trip since the clouds kept the fish up at the surface, whereas they normally head for deeper water or some type of shade when the sun gets more overhead.  Tough for a fish to be out in the direct sun when they don’t have eyelids nor sunglasses.

Tons of action the entire fishing trip from around 7am until 11am.  Started with a couple misses, assuming they were nice snook based on the sound they made striking the lure.  Next one was a real nice fish that hooked up for about 20 seconds but then maneuvered itself off the hooks.  Amazing considering there around 2 sets of treble hooks on these top water lures.  Snook do have paper-thin mouths though, so it makes it a bit tougher to keep them on.  Next fish was a keeper red!  Put him on the stringer and continued to a new area since a HUGE school of jacks showed up to destroy all the bait in the area..  

Found my way around to another side of the mangroves and noticed a fishy-looking tide rip and some fish feeding around the area.  Two major strikes by smallish tarpon, a ladyfish and then a beefy 27″ redfish.  Since you can only keep 1 redfish in this part of Florida, I swapped out the redfish to keep the bigger one, which is a benefit of keeping them alive on a stringer.  Next fish seemed like a decent snook, even jumping a few times.  But it eventually cut the line and took my lure on a jump near the yak.  Caught a few more undersize snook, but then things slowed down a bit on the paddle back to the boat ramp.  Looking forward to redfish dinner tonight in Cocoa Beach!

A good problem to have, deciding which redfish to keep..

New top water lure known as the Rave Weasel