Sanibel Causeway

JSG2891 · Post by **JSG2891** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 2:19 pm

Me and a couple of friends took a boat out to the causeway saturday night/sunday morning..we fished up current from bridge 1, near the fenders..my friends drifted live ballyhoo while I was chunking out catfish tails. In general the night was pretty slow, though we ended up getting some nice fish to the boat before the night was over. My friends ended up getting a couple of 3-4 ft. blacktips on the ballyhoo, and something bigger threw my hook after a short yet powerful run. After the tide change, i suggested we get on the other side of the bridge and again drift our baits back towards the bridge. Shortly afterwards, I hooked into a straight up lunker. I was pretty excited because I was using my new avet lx i just bought hours ago and wanted to see how it would handle..the large fish went on a powerful run towards the pilons..it felt like it could have been a shark..then all the sudden the fish started to dive straight down and ended up swiming underneath some rocks, he was stuck and I could not move the fish. While this was going on, one of my friends hooked into a 20-25 lb baby jewfish, but he was using light spinning tackle and still got the fish to the boat. His fish was released, and I was still working on mine. I was able to get him out of the rocks, but he was able to get back down there 2 more times..when he became stuck I would back off my drag, let some slack out and make the fish think everything was ok..once I got him out of the rocks the 3rd time, I was able to haul him up..about 20-30 minutes after i set the hook. It was a 44 inch jewfish, estimated at 90-100 lbs, he was FAT!! Thank goodness for my durable connection, the fish nearly wore through 6-7 ft of 250 lb leader rubbing it on those rocks he dove into. This was my first jewfish, and my other friend wanted to get him one because he said that was the biggest goliath he ever saw anyone catch, eventhough i'm sure a hundred pound jewfish is only a puppy, lol. Sure enough he ended up hooking into one shortly after, a 35 incher estimated at about 60 lbs, he was also FAT! After seeing what I went through for over 20 minutes my friend decided to make it a knockout fight with his fish, he was able to muscle it up pretty quick and the fish wasn't able to dive down into the rocks. It turned out not to be a total bust, we got 2 sharks and 2 nice grouper to the boat, and my friend did a nice job on his shark and baby jewfish with his light spinning setup. The 2 bigger grouper were caught on medium heavy conventional setups A pretty slow night for the most part, but the other boats close by weren't doing much either. I'm still waiting on my buddy to send me the pics we took of my lunker. The big fish I'm used to fighting usually go on long powerful runs (medium sized sharks, tarpon) but the grouper was different, it takes different technique to fight a goliath, and the one my friend explained to me worked well.

PhishingPhanatic · Post by **PhishingPhanatic** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 2:26 pm

Nice report, sounds like a fun time.

jamesk · Post by **jamesk** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:33 pm

The Causeway is loaded with Jewfish congrats on a good fishing trip

diggin4grouper · Post by **diggin4grouper** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 11:05 am

congrasts on your trip , we saw yall out there we were fishing the seawall at the boat ramp , caught a few short groupers and a bunch of grovers , did jump a tarpon right at frist light 300 yards of 50lb braid dont last long when your on land . he jumped a few times headed for the bumpers and was gone ...... here mom and brother , groupers were released and grover when in cooler if big enough ...

diggin4grouper · Post by **diggin4grouper** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 7:35 pm

fyi dont get caught bring that fish on the boat , the fwc guys that are around there are di**s and will fine you for it , there only one that comes around that i like , the other 3 are a pain , were were fishing the sea wall there and it was late he made my mom walk all the way back to the truck to get her fishing license and then didnt check it . the other time they thought they were being sneaky and two trucks pulled up with the lights off and they tryied to scare up like we were doing something wrong .

PhishingPhanatic · Post by **PhishingPhanatic** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 7:40 pm

Nice jewfish man, but I would guess it is more in the neighborhood of 50-60 lbs, not 90-100.

JSG2891 · Post by **JSG2891** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:02 pm

PhishingPhanatic wrote:Nice jewfish man, but I would guess it is more in the neighborhood of 50-60 lbs, not 90-100.

I swear, that is what I said at first! But my friends said it was about 100 and I thought that was too heavy, lol..I never caught one before, so its hard for me to get a read on a fish I never caught so I took their word... I didn't think it was that big either..anyways thanks to the people for the heads up.

JSG2891 · Post by **JSG2891** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:17 pm

shoot..i don't see the edit button on that post..looks like the fish police are on to me and want to harass someone for successfully releasing a fish..we had to bring him on to get the hook out safely..he was hooked deep and still did VERY well on release..bolted straight back down to where he came from.

jamesk · Post by **jamesk** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:35 pm

JSG2891 wrote:shoot..i don't see the edit button on that post..looks like the fish police are on to me and want to harass someone for successfully releasing a fish..we had to bring him on to get the hook out safely..he was hooked deep and still did VERY well on release..bolted straight back down to where he came from.

LOL I hear ya I caught one over a year ago from shore that was over 300lb on the causeway and posted a few pics on another forum and it started WW III I swear all because while I was fixing to release it the waves pushed it to shore while my wife took pics and a guy said I should be prosecuted for HARVESTING a Jew but Congrats on a great catch and release.

diggin4grouper · Post by **diggin4grouper** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 10:04 pm

JSG2891

wasnt trying to be the fish police just trying to give ya a heads up due to the fwc out there is just looking for reasons to write tickets that was all ...

jamesk · Post by **jamesk** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 11:21 am

diggin4grouper wrote:JSG2891

wasnt trying to be the fish police just trying to give ya a heads up due to the fwc out there is just looking for reasons to write tickets that was all ...

I am suprised that you have had problems with the FWC officers I have never had a problem with any of them on sanibel then again with how many times I have called them for fishing violations on people most of them recognize me

JSG2891 · Post by **JSG2891** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:24 pm

jamesk wrote:
JSG2891 wrote:shoot..i don't see the edit button on that post..looks like the fish police are on to me and want to harass someone for successfully releasing a fish..we had to bring him on to get the hook out safely..he was hooked deep and still did VERY well on release..bolted straight back down to where he came from.
LOL I hear ya I caught one over a year ago from shore that was over 300lb on the causeway and posted a few pics on another forum and it started WW III I swear all because while I was fixing to release it the waves pushed it to shore while my wife took pics and a guy said I should be prosecuted for HARVESTING a Jew but Congrats on a great catch and release.

LMAO @ you should be prosecuted for harvesting a jewfish..if anything that clown should be congratulating you for landing a 300 lb plus fish from shore! The thing is that the majority of us people who are into catching big fish from land, boat, or wherever work hard to catch our fish and work just as hard to release our fish efficiently..personally I would not even pursue big game unless I was confident in my ability to release these fish dilligently..hooking into and fighting big species is only part of lunker fishing, the release is just as important..rather than cutting the leader and hoping the hook dissolves away quickly we figured we could get a better look at the fish and cut it out with bolt cutters easily without hurting the fish at all..so instead of swimming around with a 9/0 owner hook this fish is in the same condition right now as he was before he took my bait and that is just as satisfying as winning the fight against a big fish in my opinion.

diggin4grouper · Post by **diggin4grouper** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 11:47 pm

hey JSG2891

i got a report for ya bubba

we started off going to fort myers pier and let me tell you that place blows big time . the signs say it all ......

but all we caught there was pin fish and very small catfish and i do mean small . here is my brother one one of them .

so we packed it up and went to the casueway , there was a bunch of people already there
but we set up and asked if any one was catching anything and they say not for a few hours , ok went and got my grouper rig and put a nice sized pin on there wasnt even to the bottom yet and whack , hooked up and rocked up let the rod sit for a min lose line and here we go again , landed a 23 in grouper

other than that we ended up with the one grouper and 8 grovers not a bad night

Sanibel Causeway

Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway

Re: Sanibel Causeway