REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING 8/3/2002 by Capt. Butch Rickey Actually, I was on vacation this week, but I did manage to get out on a couple of fun trips with friends. If you’re interested, read on. Sunday, my good friend Lew Joseph and I decided to take Lady G out for another shot at some summer tarpon in the Sound. We first headed up the river to catch catfish for bait. We actually caught a mixed bag of stuff including some silver trout, several whiting, catfish, and ladyfish. I had my TICA Taurus 5000 rigged and wanting to make the first fish caught on it a Silver King. We had a really tough tide, though, falling barely, and the fish just wouldn’t eat. It also didn’t help that there were boats running in every imaginable direction. Those fish weren’t about to show! No matter. Fishing is about sharing good times on the water with good friends, and it was a great day to be out with Lew and siphon some of his wisdom. On Thursday, my best bud Butch Boteler and I joined my new friend Capt. Ben Chancey on his Backcountry 20, Chew On This!! for some big snook fishing. Ben is a very nice young man, who lives up the river, and is trying to develop a specialty of fishing the river and near Sound close to home. There are big snook in the river, for sure, but trying to drag them out of where they typically hide, even with 80 lb. test gear, is hit and miss at best. Ben does well, though, and usually manages to put several fish in the boat each time out. Ben picked Butch and me up at the ramp at 10 AM. He already had some left over crokers for bait, so we went straight to his favorite big snook spot. We had a falling tide, though, which Ben said was not good, because of all the fresh water coming out of the river from Lake Okeechobee. The incoming tide would bring salt water and bait. We never had a hit. We went and caught more bait and putzed around for a while, and returned to the spot just as the tide began to move. Things were a little better. We each had several hits, but Butch was the only one of us three guides good enough to turn it into a fish. He caught a nice snook of around 7/8 pounds, which is featured on the page. But, folks, that’s a puppy for this place. Snook of 15 to 20 pounds are common for Ben on his trips. Well, it’s low percentage fishing most of the time, but if you want to challenge the big snook around the pilings, contact Capt. Ben or if you’d rather, myself. It’s not something I’d want to do as a steady diet, but a trip once in a while would be quite OK. Many thanks to Ben and Lew for fun days on the water. It’s back to work next week, and I have six trips on the books. Hopefully, there will be some good trips to report, but it is the dog days of summer, and the fishing really gets tough.