My friend Frank Carbone, owner of Hawghunter Guide Services, had a client from Japan who wanted to catch his first snook. Enter Keisuke Ota, from Japan.
Due to the closure of the Everglades National Park (Govt. shutdown) we had to move to the western edge of the park and fish "outside". Not a problem, as I said, fish are everywhere in South Florida, all I had to do was find them.
We drove almost 2 hrs. from Miami to Marco Island and started fishing around Cape Romano. I fished this area before and remembered the spots, so finding fish wasn't that difficult, or was it?
We started fishing right outside Coon Key, a spot that produced some nice fish before and we couldn't connect with any snook nor redfish, all we had were some tiny Jacks (they fight hard by the way). We spot a couple 30" + redfish but no hooking.
Later me moved to the Souther edge of Cape Romano searching for snook on the beach but these fish vanished from the shore, probably because the weather temperature dropped 20 degrees from the previous week. So we kept searching until we found a flat with a channel on the side that produced a bunch of small snook (mission accomplished with Keisuke) and bunch of large redfish, in very skinny water.
Kei managed to land one on his Crappie rod that fought like a demon.
Frank, as usual, was catching a lot of snook casting to the mangrove shoreline. What a great caster. He put his plug in every hole, like it should be.
The bait of choice was a 3" gulp shrimp on a jighead, for all species. We tried with some twitchbaits and Kei got a couple of boils, but no strikes.
It was a great fishing day and Kei got his snook. Life is good.
Due to the closure of the Everglades National Park (Govt. shutdown) we had to move to the western edge of the park and fish "outside". Not a problem, as I said, fish are everywhere in South Florida, all I had to do was find them.
We drove almost 2 hrs. from Miami to Marco Island and started fishing around Cape Romano. I fished this area before and remembered the spots, so finding fish wasn't that difficult, or was it?
We started fishing right outside Coon Key, a spot that produced some nice fish before and we couldn't connect with any snook nor redfish, all we had were some tiny Jacks (they fight hard by the way). We spot a couple 30" + redfish but no hooking.
Later me moved to the Souther edge of Cape Romano searching for snook on the beach but these fish vanished from the shore, probably because the weather temperature dropped 20 degrees from the previous week. So we kept searching until we found a flat with a channel on the side that produced a bunch of small snook (mission accomplished with Keisuke) and bunch of large redfish, in very skinny water.
Kei managed to land one on his Crappie rod that fought like a demon.
Frank, as usual, was catching a lot of snook casting to the mangrove shoreline. What a great caster. He put his plug in every hole, like it should be.
The bait of choice was a 3" gulp shrimp on a jighead, for all species. We tried with some twitchbaits and Kei got a couple of boils, but no strikes.
It was a great fishing day and Kei got his snook. Life is good.
