REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING 2/22/03 by Capt. Butch Rickey It was a good week of fishing, but the catching was not always great. The front that came through Monday seemed to really shut things down, and bait became very tough to catch. I did have three trips, with some great folks. Read on. First up on Monday was my old fishing buddy John Hitt. We headed straight to the third span of the causeway to find bait, and found that the bait was suddenly very tough after the passing of the front. There were a lot of boats out there trying to catch bait, but not much was being caught. We had a heck of a time, but finally succeeded in catching enough to fish with. History seems to show that when bait is tough, so is the fishing. Monday was no exception, and further proved history. John and I fished hard for hours, and had 2 snook and 3 nice trout to three pounds to show for our efforts. I finally stopped at a small mangrove key I hadn't fished in several years, and John immediately got a nice red on a shiner. So, I went into action cutting bait and chumming, in hopes of getting a bite started. WE wound up with 5 fish on, but two managed to get away. The largest was 27 inches, and the three John caught sure seemed to turn the day around. Plus, we got our West Coast Slam. Tuesday was my first outing with Andy Schoener, from Englewood, who has been reading my fishing reports for years. He said he wanted to fish with me because I always told the truth in my reports, and didn't gloss things over. His son-in-law Marty who was down visiting from Jersey, was with him. They were both watermen back home. Of course, we began with catching bait at the causeway. Although bait was still tough, it was much easier than it had been on Monday. We got most of our bait quickly by chumming right at the last of the falling tide, and first of the incoming. Once loaded, we were off in search of snook and trout. We headed up to a big pothole near Demere Key, but found no fish there. The second stop was the charm for big trout. We caught at least a couple dozen big trout as large as 5 pounds, and a ladyfish. Every trout we caught was at the top of the slot or larger. The boys commented that they had never seen trout like these. As the water flooded the flats we turned our attentions to snook. They still weren't in much of an eating mood, but Marty did manage to catch 3, and missed a few, and I got an 8 pounder. As the tide neared it's end, we headed to the same spot John and I had caught our reds the day before, but the redfish we're about to eat. The front seemed to have shut down everything except the trout fishing. We had a great time, and Andy was kind enough to send me a very nice letter, which I will shortly post in my testimonials section. Thursday was my first trip with Roscoe Dobbs, and his lovely wife Ruth, of Highland, Illinois. This was their first time to fish our area. We headed straight to the causeway to catch bait, and I was hopeful that we could do it quickly and be gone. But, on the first throw, my net found something big and solid on the bottom, and I couldn't budge it. I finally had to tie the rope to the one of the cleats on the stern, and pull it off with the Yamaha. The next was pretty torn up, but still had about three dozen baits in it. We had to wait for the tide to turn to the incoming before we could catch any more bait. The net was hard to throw, but still worked, and we loaded up chumming as the tide kicked. Out on the flats, we found a great big trout bite. Roscoe and Ruth caught a bunch of them up to four pounds. Once again, there wasn't one that wasn't in the slot or larger. That's great trout fishing. But, we couldn't get one shook to take a bait and hold on to it long enough to catch him. We did manage to boat one red, and missed several others. The Dobbs were great fun. All in all it was a great day, and we had a good time. I think from here on in to March we're going to see the fishing really get hot. As soon as the water gets to around 70, the snook should really turn on, and I'm already finding some big reds around the mangroves. Tight Lines