REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING 7/27/2002 by Capt. Butch Rickey Things have come to a screeching halt as the end of July approaches, and there is only one outing to report on this week. It was a hot Wednesday for my first trip with Tony Laporta and his lovely wife Rosa, of New York City. The anticipated high was 93 humid degrees, and the breeze was out of the southeast feeding the furnace. We headed straight to Chino Island for bait. I’ve had some other folks tell me they couldn’t find bait there, but there has been plenty for me. It’s still on the small side, but getting bigger, and it comes easily. Once loaded with bait, I headed to a spot that I normally fish in late fall, winter, and early spring, but I reckoned that the deeper water might also be cooler and the fish would find it attractive. There were snook there, and we caught several, but it didn’t last long once the tide really began moving. I headed north up into the middle of the Sound to an area that I often find redfish, and after a couple of moves, we did get into some reds. I chummed to try to hold them in the hole so we could catch lots of them, and although one of the fish we kept was full of my cut chum, they left us after catching only two, and missing a couple. I headed across the Sound looking for more redfish, but they weren’t to be found. I covered a lot of ground without ever seeing a school. With no redfish in my sights, I turned my attention back to snook, and Tony had a good time catching several more. As we neared the end of our trip we were short a trout to give Tony a Slam, and I asked if he’d like to try to catch a couple. He was agreeable, as he still wanted some fish to feed his gang, so we headed to a flat off North Captiva that usually holds nice keeping size trout. It was late in the morning with the noon hour nearing, and usually things shut down around then with the heating of the sun overhead. But, we managed to catch several trout, and kept three to join the redfish for dinner. It wasn’t a bad day of flats fishing for this time of year. The fishing can and often does really slow down during July and August. Next week’s tides are very poor, and if anything comes along it will be tough fishing, indeed.