Got a call a few weeks back with an invite to Bonita Springs to do some fishing while they had plans to attend a wedding. so i figured why not? always wanted to fish somewhere new, just never have. we leave Albany,GA around 9 am Thursday morning. the trip is roughly about 7 hours if everything runs smoothly.....well everything did for about 3 hours. traffic flowed nicely until it came to a dead stop. I75 was shut down due to some construction and was directed to take a detour to get around it. so that was our first set back. about an hour later we are talking and wasn't paying 100% attention to the signs and 75 splits off to 275 and i took 275! by the time i realized what was happening there was too many cars on my left to get over, so down 275 we went. took an exit to turn around and ended up in downtown Tampa.. we finally make it out and back on 75 after fighting rush hour and wrecks. we turn this 7 hour trip into 10.5. so much for fishing that evening. get to the hotel to park the boat and plug it up to charge for the night. Friday morning. get down to the boat ramp and the boat won't crank. drive over to auto zone to have the batteries tested. bad battery, blue top optima battery BAD. so end up buying a new battery and back of the ramp we go. we get to our first spot where we start fishing. we fished a small bay called Tarpon Bay. we fish a few boat docks on the way in since its a manatee zone, and had to idle. We put the trolling motor down and started our day! first cast my fishing partner catches a small Gag Grouper. in about 9 feet of water under a dock. i throw to the other side and i also reel in a small Gag, we trolled on and i make a cast and the Third fish is a small Jack! we finally make it in the bay where there is Mangroves around the whole bay. we trolled around the mangroves for a little while and a lot of blow ups but no hook ups. we finally catch a fish fishing the groves and its a small little Red. we drifted the small flats that where inside of the bay and got our limit of trout. we make a few runs to other mangroves it is t so neat to fish something like that. I've only seen this kinda stuff of the fishing shows. 730 rolls around and the sun is setting so we call it a day. it was a catch and release day.
Day Two:
wake up about the same time and make it down to the ramp around 7:00 being a Saturday we knew the ramp was going to be full. we fished the same bay but went back further into the back and found a cut that has some swift water coming through onto a skinny flat. might have been 7-8 inch deep. we fished around there for a little bit and drifted through the skinny part. we found a nice grass flat where the water dropped off to about 4-5 foot. we caught over 40 trout that ranged from 14 inch to 22 within an hour making just a few drifts on that single grass flat. it was something I've never experienced and i had a blast doing it. what top my trip was i made one of my finial cast. using a jig head with a Slayer SSB and hooked up to my first Permit! didn't know those fish could fight the way they did and mine wasn't even big. to we ended the trip shortly after to keep from showing up at the wedding in Columbia shirts and buff's. Sunday morning we stopped at the Bass pro shop on the way back to waste some money and then headed back north for the work week. My experience i had down there is something i enjoyed a lot and can't wait to go back. we didn't have any luck with the Snook but hopefully looking to make a trip again this year when the time is right in hopes to land one. i would highly recommending anyone to go down to Bonita and fish. its a very nice and friendly town. A lot of snow birds too! with our short time there we didn't have a chance to fish everywhere we wanted. i believe i could spend weeks there and not cover everything i saw and wanted to fish. but that's pretty much my weekend report. i will post a few pictures below of the catch. It's excited to catch something we can't normally catch up here in the bend bend. i had a great time and can't wait to go back.! we also threw everything back this day as well.
The total fish count for the two days:
2 goruper
3 red's
10 plus Jack's
1 Permit
1 Spanish
70+ Trout
