Fishing with Patrick - still early summer patterns

We had Patrick down here this past weekend for some fishing, World Cup watching and beer drinking.  We started off Saturday morning at Cockroach looking for snook up top as we had Patrick up on the bow with the fly rod casting to the mangrove points.  We didn't have a single taker unfortunately so we ran north to fish another couple of shore lines and look for some trout.  We fished Schuster's hole with no takers but a missed flounder that followed a shrimp off the sand and missed the shrimp the second time when Patrick stopped the bait.  We started seeing a lot of activity off the mangroves as the tide was falling out so we turned and started fishing the mullet and started catching a few trout.  Well it wasn't long until we found quite a few fish with some larger fish mixed in. Both of us connected on 22-23 inch fish and with the 19 inch fish we had in the cooler already we had dinner before 9:30.

Well you shouldn't "leave fish to find fish" but we wanted to see if we could find some reds and snook.  So we made a quick run back south and set up along some of the outside mangroves and started working the edges.  We caught a quick snook and had a couple of other bites but nothing consistent so with the tide finally rolling in we moved inside to set up on some inside mangroves.  Well my first hole didn't really produce much off the bat other than a catfish so we moved down to the cut and first cast in we were rewarded with a nice snook.

Well I thought that was going to be the beginning of something good but we really didn't get any more bites even though the current was just getting up and moving.  We putted around there for a little while longer and had some lunch and let the cut rest and ended up a smaller red after a little break.

After another long break and a finish up with lunch another first drift through the cut produced a quick bite which peeled off line back underneath the mangroves and took a couple of jumps.  Well after a quick 20 seconds of horsing it out of the mangroves Patrick was able to pull the fish down and out of the mangroves.  As he was getting the fish back to the boat it decided to turn and head back to the mangroves which in turn sliced right through the leader.  Either it was frayed from the mangrove roots or the gill covers when right through it since more than likely it was a solid snook.

The point of a lost fish.  

From there it was getting later in the afternoon and we were getting low on shrimp and still had plans on fishing that evening if the weather cooperated so we decided to load up and head back to St. Pete.  Well unfortunately after a great dinner the weather turned ugly so we decided to visit Cycle instead and have a couple of Doug's great beers. 

The following morning we decided to throw all the eggs into the tarpon basket with an east wind and ran off the beaches early looking for rolling fish.  Well it didn't take long to spot our first fish but without it coming back up again we really couldn't get an idea on where it was headed.  We moved a little further north to more boats and caught a couple more fish rolling as well but they all looked like they were on their way very quickly to Key West as they were making serious time down the beaches.  After that we waited a little while longer and saw one more possible roll but it was time to make our way back to the launch to load up to make sure we got Patrick back to the airport.  Overall it was a great way to spend the weekend and we accomplished everything we set out to do even though we didn't hook up on the tarpon.