I had wanted to try fishing the Myakka river for awhile now, but haven’t taken the time until this week. My wife and I got up early,  loaded the gear, the dogs, our lunch, cooler and everything else, hooked up the boat and headed to Snook Haven on Thursday morning. Well, apparently the banjo club or country music club or something simular takes presidence on Thursdays (and Sundays) to boat launching so you can’t launch there on those days. I guess a little home work would have come in handy prior to arrival time. A little disheartened and at a loss at where to head to from there, we headed home and decided to try again on Friday.

We got a bit of a late start on Friday but made our way north from Snook Harbor at about 10:00. This was to be an exploration of the river as much as a fishing day. Using the trolling motor to head upstream, I began casting different lures to see what would work . I really didn’t care what I caught, but snook was really what I was hoping for. We were the only ones on the river, except for some gators. Eight in all during the day from two feet to about eight feet in length. If you have never been on the river, there are parts that seem totally uninhabited and quite wild, really kind of cool. Anyway, back to the fishing part. After trying some stick baits, jigs, and some topwaters, I threw on a Lucky Craft rattle crank. Two casts later and WHAM line is screaming off the reel. (Shimano Curado baitcaster on a Carrot stick 6.6 heavy medium rod, 12# fluro, no leader) I spent a few minutes wrangling the fish without ever getting a glimpse. FINALLY, it showed itself on the surface, a 34 inch Gar hooked in the corner of the mouth. After landing, measuring and gingerly removing the hook, I was ready to continue. A  few casts later, here we go again. This one was a bit bigger. He stayed on until I was reaching down to grab him when “SNAP” there goeas the line (and my $15. lure) with him. I think I said “Darn”…… or something like that and started to cry. Being the persvering and well stocked fisherman that I am, I pulled out my matching lure, tied on a 20# leader and away I went. Of course two fish (all Gar) later, I lost that one too. Time to grab the Sebile’s.

We were North of the 75 bridge on a little bend of the river casting the Sebile rattle when I got a solid hit and it felt different than the gar that had been rather active over the first couple hours. Sure enough, a Snook. OK, so it was only 18 inches, but it was my first Snook so its all good! An hour later, on a straight stretch of river, my reel started to sing. This was a GREAT fish, I could tell from the feel. Rod bent, drag fairly tight but still taking out line, a smile on my face, I was in fisherman heaven. After all this time enjoying the scenery of the river, a 32″ Snook was wrestling with ME!

I turned him loose, put on a new leader and cast again. On the very next cast, I hear the sweetest sound a fisherman knows, it sings a melody like on other, of line going the wrong way against a struggling drag when the distant end is hooked to something that dosen’t want anything to do with the fisherman, the boat he’s in or the dogs that are barking in excitment at all the commotion as it jumps clear of the water not once, not twice, but three times. A twin of the last one, it finally succumbs my superior skill, quality tackle and expert  boat handling. After letting that one go and eager to go again, I cast to the same area. Another snook and the fight is on, forgetting to check my leader prior to the cast cost me this fish as he was approaching the boat, unfortunatly he took my Sebile with him. As did the next one on the next cast. This one wrapped me on my own trolling motor, broke off and kept my last Sebile rattle as a momento, a trophy to show his friends how he humbled te great fisherman. The fact that there were now 5 fish in the river with $75 plus worth of lures makes me  (and especially my wife) wonder who bested who.

The weather was perfect, the company delightful, the quarry exciting and the setting spectacular, what else could anyone ask for?

So two good friends of mine are in the process of creating a new fishing show called 3F Adventures to be syndicated on network tv, they have already shot three ”pilot” episodes  that are on youtube and Facebook and they have already had over 100,000 views! So they asked me if I wanted to do an offshore episode a few weeks ago and of course I jumped at the chance but with scheduling conflicts, weather  and other trips having come up it took awhile to get a day on the water. This past Sunday was the only day that meshed with all of our schedules and the weather but of course it had to be “super bowl Sunday” so we had to be back at the dock at 3pm……..(I hate time frames).

As a side note to keep in mind, Sunday was basically a full moon so I really had to pay close attention to the soluner tables, the major feed period was 9:47am-11:47am. Anyone who fishes alot offshore knows how important this is. With this being said I had to produce snapper, grouper and amberjack for the camera man on the boat so he could get all the shots in one day, not an easy task given the situation.

Any way we meet at the dock at 7am, do about an hour of interviewing for the camera and we are off to the fishing grounds.  We arrive at the spot and get set to film right at 9:30am, baits go down and its snapper and grouper constant for about 2 hours but no AJ’s…….now I’m getting worried so we pick up and run to a spring in 100ft of water. We get there and the fish-finder is lit up like a christmas tree with AJ’s, more than I have seen in a long time, I mean there were 60ft of AJ’s marked above the spring. I anchor right over the spring drop down a big blue runner and nothing no takers, so I try grunts…..nothing, I try shrimp, pinfish, live sardines, threadfin, butterfly jigs, bucktail jigs, tube lures I mean I tryed everything I couldn’t buy a bite. So I put 4 rods down at the same time all with different baits at different depths and set them in the rod holders and we waited. Finally at 1:55pm literally 5 minutes before I had to start calling it a day we get our first and only AJ, got it on film, pulled the anchor and headed home. All in all it was a good shoot, the episode should be available for viewing in about a month.

Here are some pictures of Lauren (the TV show Host) with some of our adventures of the day.

Spent the morning chasing big reds down in Charlotte Harbor today with Club Member John Jernican.

We managed about 6 redfish that were mostly way over-slot.  This one weighed in at 16lbs.  We also managed a lot of trout and flounder mixed in with the reds.  Reds were all caught on spoons and the trout and flounder on 1/8th oz jigs and “lil-Jons”

Spent Saturday and Sunday with my Utica  NY buddies aboard Fait Accompli. We were on the mid reefs( 45′ + or – ) in an agitated  sea but not too uncomfortable.

Many odds and ends caught on shrimp, cut bait and spanish sardines that were eager to jump on the sabikis.

Attached is the best of the day but too bad it wasn’t dinner fare.

Besides the usual exercise of hookups with goliath groupers ( we suspect) Sat we had three incidents of reel screamers picking up our live bait offerings only to have the throw the hooks. Need more education from our leader I supect.

Regards  Captn Jim

Couldn’t make it out last weekend for unnamed reasons…  Had filled the well with pins Saturday evening and they were begging to be traded in for larger models, so put together a trip for Thursday even though the forecast was iffy.  The plan was to try and work a 4 degree temp break that looked real nice at about 55 miles for BFT or wahoo.   Ran out the Venice jetties at 6:30am and avoided the crabtrap buoys to hit our decision point at D9 at about 7:45am.  Running parallel to the 3-4ft. SE swells wasn’t bad at all.  Picked up a couple AJ’s right off the bat and had a nice cobia follow a bait back to the boat, but he wouldn’t eat.  The crew was game to try another 25 miles out so we started, but only a few miles later decided it was better to leave it for another day.  The tops were getting blown off the swells and the old, wimpy capt. wasn’t that optimistic about a long run back in deteriorating weather.  We turned south  and ran a few miles when we marked a promising show on the sonar, so turned back and picked up 4 nice 30″ RG’s, some porgies and triggers.  That spot will get named…  Stopped at one more spot on the way in to finish the day.  The crew seemed happy and we’ll eat fresh fish.