Pine Island Fishing Report: Great Rising Tide Redfishing

Ok, I think we're finally over this winter thing here on Pine Island. I spent yesterday with Cape Cod anglers Doug and Mark Nickerson and had a blast nailing some big redfish out in the Sound. We left Matlacha at sunrise and spotted a bunch of tailers in the northern part of the Pass but couldn't coax any into eating. In fact, we couldn't rent a bite for the next three hours of falling tide.  Once that switched and the flood tide started everything changed.

I could see lots of reds cruising under the bushes and once the live shrimp hit the water it was usually a quick eat.  This was a beautiful 26 incher for Doug.

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This is Mark with his best fish of the day, a 28 incher.

Another one for Doug.

This was the best picture of the day that I unforunately screwed up by knocking the auto-focus off on my new Nikkor lens.  The guys had a double-header hookup on identical 26 inch reds and did a great job landing both.  I did a lousy job of capturing the photo. 

This was the only under slot fish we caught all day, a 16 inch rat red.

Oh yeah, they landed an handful of big fat trout, too.  Great day on the water.