6-26-11 web report

 Venice, Florida tarpon dried up briefly, but Boca Grande still has silver kings.

 Fishing was tough last week but we enjoyed some quality catches. It has been a hectic time and I am thankful for a busy, productive season so far. Things will start to slow down around here after the Forth of July weekend. The out of town guides will go back where they came from and leave us with happy fish that bite better. We will need to look around more because the abundant schools of easy to locate tarpon are on the move now. They started a big spawning run offshore on the June Fifteenth Full Moon as usual. The good news is we will have enough tarpon to keep us busy for the next couple of months.

Now that many fish have spawned they will need to replenish their spent energy. This means they will be hungry. I can not figure out why fish were so screwy last week but they have to eat to maintain strength! We found hundreds of silver kings several days that seemed happy and relaxed but had no appetite. Sure we did get a few bites; it was just nothing like the action the numbers of fish we worked would normally produce. Schools of scattered silver kings were spread out in front of the Boca Grande village off the beaches and farter off shore. Strong winds frequently forced lots of guide boats to gather in protected areas on schools we could safely fish. Several boats on one school of fish only produces bites if the guides are able to work together. We had some times this worked perfect and others opportunities that needed improvement. One interesting observation was that the fancier the boat and its decals the more improvement was desired! I look forward to looking for fish and not running from uninvited company. While we all appreciate the busy fishing season we have enjoyed it will be nice to back off to a less challenging calendar.  

We will be riding up into Charlotte Harbor some days; or along the Gulf Beaches from Venice to Boca Grande in search of the exciting tarpon action. We still use crabs to start with but also use minnows and even ladyfish when we can find them. Match the hatch still works most of the time. What ever produces bites? This is sight fishing where we actually see the fish we are casting to. It involves cruising to locate fish then stalking them and presenting live baits to the fish.  We can anchor up and soak baits if we have scattered tarpon around.

We caught and released some very larger snook last week; but fish slowed down Saturday. We have some quality snook fishing if you want to enjoy light tackle live bait fishing.   I use ten to twenty pound spinning gear and whatever lively minnows I can catch. Some of our snook are already spawning and working back inside. We did get some good rains this week and that dropped our water temps dramatically which may have been or problem Saturday. We started off with a fine thirty-five inch trophy and then had to work to get a few more smaller fish and two over slot redfish. It was fun and we had nice fish but we did have to work at it. We saw plenty of smaller trout and caught a couple bigger ones Thursday. We had several very larger snook up to forty inches recently. We even had several trophy snook around Englewood from thirty to forty inches with Jeff and Mary Beth of Michigan, last Friday.

 Some Spanish are around and I believe we still have a few kingfish on the near shore reefs. I just was busy with snook and tarpon recently. I hear we still have some permit available. Sharks are around if we want them. Snapper should improve any time. It was wonderful to share so many productive, exciting, fun fishing trips with new and long time friends during our busy season. Now we look forward to a slower pace and even more fun. Let’s Go Fishin’ soon. For more info and reservations check out <www.captvan.com>