I live in Port Charlotte, FL on a canal with access to the Myakka River near El Jobean, FL and Charlotte Harbor. I own a boat and I love to fish. I'm new to Florida so I'm learning a new kind of fishing and I thought a record of fish caught, weather, tides, etc. for each trip would help me to learn quicker. That record is what you'll find in my blog which I post as soon as I possibly can so check before you're going out, my success or failure might help make your trip more productive.
High Tide: 8:45 AM 2 FT Low Tide: 5:45 PM -0.1 FT Wind: 5-10 S Air Temp: 75/95 Water Temp: 87 Clarity: clear
We drove to Placida and got on the water by around 7:00 AM. We went directly to the 2 little islands off the Fishery Restaurant and with one throw of the net filled the livewell with small needle fish about 3-5 inches long. We headed straight east to Catfish Creek and fished some of the mangrove islands and channels near the front. I used up the rest of my Gulp Swimming Mullet on little trout and probably more pinfish but trout was all I hooked. It was slow fishing with nothing worth catching so I decided to try some deeper grass flats.
I found a place out in front of Catfish Creek where the water dropped from 1 to 4-5 feet so we headed over to see what it looked like. It seemed grassy and the depth finder was showing stands of bigger weed or something. So we put some of our needle fish out and I casted a bunch of stuff as we drifted along for a half hour with no more than small trout for our efforts. Then, suddenly Karen's pole got yanked almost out of her hand but before she could but her book down and tend to it the fish was off. A few minutes later she got another big strike and landed, after lots of moaning and groaning, a small black tip shark about 20 inches long. So we finally had some fun with a real fish. I dropped the anchor and started chumming with a bait chum I'd mixed. For the next hour we were catching and losing one shark after the other. We were using 35 lb Florcarbon leader which is pretty easily cut by a sharks teeth so we lost quite a few. We ran out of needlefish but Karen managed to get a small ladyfish in and I chunked that up. That was better than the needlefish and Karen got another slightly larger 24 inch shark in the boat.
It was around 10 AM and the sun was starting to get hot again so we decided to take our limit of 2 shark home for supper. It will be my first time eating black tip shark, I hope it's good because it sure was fun catching. I'll let you know tomorrow.
P.S. If you are wondering why I'm posing with the catch, you don't know Karen. She didn't want to get anywhere near that shark until it was cooked.
