07-22-2003, 10:38 AM
Fishing report, Charlotte Harbor, Gasperilla, Boca Grande.
July 15, 2003
Hot bites and stormy fishing, Boca Grande and the Gasperilla area has been hot and stormy. This time of year the best fishing times for the fisherman are the magic daylight and twilight hours, however some fun fishing time can be had during the heat of the day if you can stand the heat. Lots of fast and furious action on nice size mackerel and big ladyfish. These fish can be caught on artificials, white jigs, spoons or silver rattle traps, but if you want the fastest action find some white bait and start a chum line. White bait is small right now but there is plenty of it and that’s what the fish are feeding on, so go down on the size of the hook and use the small bait. Find the macks and ladyfish around the passes and near the beaches. Same story, if you can’t find bait for chum, look for birds or fish crashing the bait on top of the water, and check the deep sides of the sandbars outside the passes.
We’ve had some great days the last couple weeks, doing some “everything’ fishing. Starting out in the morning looking for reds and snook. If the snook and reds are not cooperating then we go for the fun fishing, always plenty of trout around with a mixture of ladyfish, jacks, small sharks and a mackerel or two. If that isn’t fast enough we head out to the pass for some bigger ladyfish and mackerel. Yesterday we sat in one spot for two hours and caught ladyfish and mackerel until we got tired. All of them between 18 and 23 inches, had something on and spooled one reel and even got a 26 in shark.
And Yes, we kept some of the larger fish for bait. Goliath Grouper (Jew Fish) bait, the bigger the better. Went to the ‘BIG FISH HOLE’ and within 15 minutes we hooked up to a 350 plus pounder, got him up on the boat and he was 5 ½ foot long. Estimated at 350. This was one of the ‘coolest’ hits I’ve ever had. Had a heavy bite with no hookup and thought I’d better check the bait, while pulling the bait up I saw this GIANT mouth coming after it, just as it reached the surface, so did the mouth, he sucked it in and headed back down, unbelievable fight, got around some structure and we had to wait him out, after a few minutes with us keeping the pressure on he came out and the fight was on again, got him on the boat for a quick picture and released for a future fight. And that was only the first 30 minutes. After that we hooked up about 6 more time but couldn’t get them to the boat, had two break off and got hooked up on structure and had to break off a couple times and then the regular evening storm ran us off.
Over all a GREAT day, caught trout, mackerel, jacks, shark, big ladyfish, hooked a few snook, and topped it off with a 350 pound Goliath Grouper. John and Emily were happy and going back to New Jersey with some real fish stories.
Captain Randy Knowles
[url "http://www.noslackcharters.com/"][#0000ff]www.noslackcharters.com[/#0000ff][/url]CaptRandy@captainran.com
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