Fishing Charlotte Harbor Area (Englewood: move to, park, underwater)

[Foxrivman1]

That is quite a schedule you have MA!

Well here is an update, we have officially been delayed due to a speed bump with our home up here. Good news is, only by about a month, so, BH and MA, was hoping to get down there in mid-July, now more like mid-August to look again.

At least when we finally get moved down there it will be at the tail end of summer!

[Messing About]

Planning a pleasure cruise tomorrow; no fishing. We have family visiting from Texas and, weather permitting, I will run from the North end of Charlotte Harbor to the ICW; back north to Gasparilla Pass/Placida Harbor (is it still blue after all the rain?); take a dip in the clear waters and then run south to Cabbage Key for lunch; finally back to my home port. That'll be about a hundred mile run on the day. 8am to 4pm

[Big House]

Originally Posted by Messing About

Planning a pleasure cruise tomorrow; no fishing. We have family visiting from Texas and, weather permitting, I will run from the North end of Charlotte Harbor to the ICW; back north to Gasparilla Pass/Placida Harbor (is it still blue after all the rain?); take a dip in the clear waters and then run south to Cabbage Key for lunch; finally back to my home port. That'll be about a hundred mile run on the day. 8am to 4pm

Dunno when you're leaving? I have a friend down, and we are going to run down to BG and do some fishing.

I built a recirculating live well that brings canal water into a fish / shrimp holding tank and returns it to the canal. Always cool, always aerated, aways fresh. Yesterday, I sat on the dock and caught some pin fish for bait. I checked on them this morning and they are all doing great! I'm pleased that now, I don't have to spend have the time out catching bait fish for a trip out.

[Foxrivman1]

Originally Posted by Big House

Dunno when you're leaving? I have a friend down, and we are going to run down to BG and do some fishing.

I built a recirculating live well that brings canal water into a fish / shrimp holding tank and returns it to the canal. Always cool, always aerated, aways fresh. Yesterday, I sat on the dock and caught some pin fish for bait. I checked on them this morning and they are all doing great! I'm pleased that now, I don't have to spend have the time out catching bait fish for a trip out.

Take a pic of your livewell so we can see your handy work! Sounds like it works great!

[Messing About]

BH - that sounds awesome. My friend up the canal from me has a similar setup.

We launched at 830AM and we pleasantly surprised to fish dead calm flat water from the upper harbor to half way to the ICW at BGP. I tried to anchor down on the north shore of Gasparilla Pass but my anchor pin wouldn't hold in the loose sand below. After a few tries and failures, the current was like a swift water rapids, we found ourselves in trouble...getting bounced around on the 6-18" floor. I was forced to raise the outboard to protect the shaft and I tried to use the trolling motor, but again, the current kept slamming us into the sandy shoal. With the tide falling, the only way out was to jump out and manually tow the boat to deeper water. The current was soooo strong, it wasn't easy but we did it.

Thankfully, my bro-in-law and his wife stayed calm throughout the ordeal and we were no worse for wear. We changed our lunch locale to the Gasparilla Grill and it was very good. I inspected all systems and found no damage.

We then cruised the ICW back to BGP and into the Gulf channel just so my guests could say they boated in the Gulf. The winds on the day were less than predicted, which was nice. We had a light chop on the way home and landed at my port at 3PM.

The good news was the water was a beautifully comfortable temperature. The bad news was we didn't get to relax in it. We ran 61 miles on the day and used about 20 gallons of fuel.

I'm off to Vegas tomorrow for work meetings and hope to be back fishing here on Wednesday.

[Big House]

Originally Posted by Messing About

BH - that sounds awesome. My friend up the canal from me has a similar setup.

We launched at 830AM and we pleasantly surprised to fish dead calm flat water from the upper harbor to half way to the ICW at BGP. I tried to anchor down on the north shore of Gasparilla Pass but my anchor pin wouldn't hold in the loose sand below. After a few tries and failures, the current was like a swift water rapids, we found ourselves in trouble...getting bounced around on the 6-18" floor. I was forced to raise the outboard to protect the shaft and I tried to use the trolling motor, but again, the current kept slamming us into the sandy shoal. With the tide falling, the only way out was to jump out and manually tow the boat to deeper water. The current was soooo strong, it wasn't easy but we did it.

Thankfully, my bro-in-law and his wife stayed calm throughout the ordeal and we were no worse for wear. We changed our lunch locale to the Gasparilla Grill and it was very good. I inspected all systems and found no damage.

We then cruised the ICW back to BGP and into the Gulf channel just so my guests could say they boated in the Gulf. The winds on the day were less than predicted, which was nice. We had a light chop on the way home and landed at my port at 3PM.

The good news was the water was a beautifully comfortable temperature. The bad news was we didn't get to relax in it. We ran 61 miles on the day and used about 20 gallons of fuel.

I'm off to Vegas tomorrow for work meetings and hope to be back fishing here on Wednesday.

Yesterday, I went down to BGP and drift fished it for several passes. We had a few big bites, but no luck. On one occassion I think I found a flaw in my 150# braided line. I had a hook up, and as I began reelling, about 6" from the tip of my rod the line broke.

Later we pulled behind cayo costa to get out of the pull of the tide through the pass, and we caught a couple sharks - nothing big, but we did have another big strike.

It was nice having the live well, so I could pre-load up on bait the day before, and not have to spend so much time with my guest trying to catch some.

MA, I was gonna call you, but I was busy acting as a fishing guide, setting everything up, and making sure we didn't get things tangled, ect....

[Messing About]

MA, I was gonna call you, but I was busy acting as a fishing guide, setting everything up, and making sure we didn't get things tangled, ect....

I'm in Vegas for two days of work meetings but returning on a red eye Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.

I'm planning on taking my Son-in-Law and Grand-twins out on Wednesday, weather permitting. Looks very promising now. Winds 5-10, seas smooth early, light chop later.

I heard the live shrimp around town are really getting slim. Are you finding any white bait out there?

[Messing About]

I got home from my Vegas business meetings at 2AM Wednesday and by 9AM we were loaded with live bait and headed out to Boca Grande Pass.
I had my 11 year old twin grandsons, Dylan & Devin, along with their Dad, Curt.

It was a nice run in light seas. We went through one passing shower but quickly out ran it. Once at the BGP we dropped live shrimp in and Devin was immediately hooked up. To all of our delight, he pulled up a 24" Bonnethead Shark. When a soon to be 6th grader from Phoenix goes back to school with pictures of the shark he caught, that's a great "how I spent my summer vacation" story. Throughout the day, tarpon were rolling all around us and we saw two incidents of tarpon being ambused by huge sharks at the surface.

I acted as both Captain and crew, not fishing but just working for all these guys, to ensure they had the best time possible. We caught and released many red and gag grouper, the biggest of which were 18 and 19 inches long, both caught by the twins. The reds were so close to keeper size I measured several, but each was a little short of the 20" required.
I take great pride in showing the boys the importance of reviving their fish for a successful release. We have a tradition of saying, "Catch ya later!" as the fish swim back down to the bottom. Each one of my guests caught and released 3 or 4 fish.

The afternoon winds picked up the seas and by 2PM, BGP was showing white caps. We boated over to Pelican Bay, off Cayo Costa, to get on the lee side of the island and have lunch in 2' of calm water with a light breeze. I took a rare swim in the Bay but no one else wanted to.

By 3PM we decided to try for one more hookup each and went back into the pass. Once we got into 60' of water, the twins decided they'd had enough and just wanted to watch. Curt and I baited up live pinfish on 30lb test and dropped them over. Very quickly we were both hooked up but we realized these were not grouper or small sharks. My line zipped out at the speed of light and quickly went limp. Bait gone.

Curt was in even more trouble. His 300 yards of braid was getting spooled. I jumped into the helm and fired up the boat. We chased the fish down as Curt told me he was down to the last few strands of mono at the bottom of the Penn spinning reel. I've never had this happen on my boat. We used the boat to recover the line back to where we could see braid on the reel and Curt did a good job directing me from his fighting chair, telling me when to go neutral and when to go forward. That green braid was really hard for me to see from the helm.

The fish would be under our boat in one second and then charge out ahead of us the next. I'm pretty sure it was a Tarpon from the way I saw the line acting. He may have also been being pursued by sharks because he was clearly in a desperation panic mode. We ended up getting back about half of our line before the line was broken and limp. The fight lasted over 30 minutes and Curt was pretty impressed with the physical battle. He'd never known fishing could be like this.

In choppy 3' seas we headed for home. The twins enjoyed the occassional "banger" as we tried to keep the boat near 20 knots. We never did get anymore rain on us but saw it all around us. As we got behind the lee shore in Alligator Bay I was able to get the boat up to 36 knots, even with full bait wells, 4 guys and all our gear aboard. Not bad.

By 5:30 we were back on my lift, exhausted but full of new memories of Messing About in South Florida. I can't help but believe that 10 or 20 years from now, the twins will be sitting together, having a beer, watching their own kids play or fish and one will say..."Remember those summers in Florida on Pappy's boat?" "Remember when you caught that shark?"

[pcozad1]

This was a couple weeks ago looking from cape haze reef towards burnt store. We missed this storm but the next day we werent so lucky.

[Big House]

Originally Posted by pcozad1

This was a couple weeks ago looking from cape haze reef towards burnt store. We missed this storm but the next day we werent so lucky.

I think I was out that day, and skirted to the left of that storm, and went into Burnt Store for dinner! It looks exactly like what we were facing when we left BGP and decided it was time to head in. It kept moving south, so we were able to make it in, and only got about two drops of rain on us.