Sanibel Report

[fishinDave07]

too bad for the snook . but it seems ya had a good time

[EFC fishing]

on the way there, pay attention to the "stop for pedestrians" at their crossings- like every 20 or 30 feet or so- they will fine you. (didn't happen to us but still, am not used to that sort of thing)

access to Sanibel Island was $6.00.

currently all the bridges after the toll booth are under construction so that will kill most of wanting to fish near the bridge- there might be some little beach spots- just didnt look at them too hard.

as far as I know there is one bait shop over there- live shrimp was like $3.00 a dozen- this is not the special or hand picked ones either.

dont recall any quick eating places there but there was 7-11- was one place that is more faster food- I think it is called Schnappers (?) but they were busy the whole time there & I waited almost an hour for a medium cheese pizza.

pay parking meter at pier now is $2.00 for one hour- if you pay for more then that, be sure it is in the increments of $2 (like 4, 6, 8, etc.) because meter will spit out a ticket that says insufficient funds. also there is a meter attendent who goes around VERY REGULARLY to check for expired tickets- you will get $50.00 fine if expired. but he was cool to get us the extra time back on the $5.00 insufficient ticket we had.

dont feed the birds on the pier- you will get fined. seems like you can get fined for just about anything over there. dont cast net from the pier. dont bring more then two rods. dont leave your stuff unattended. if you get a spot stay on it because if you move for a second someone else will take it. And pay attention to the 'sight seers' because that little pier gets way too crowded with more people 'looking n asking questions' then fisher people themselves.

Yeah the big sheephead were on over there yesterday, but it wasn't steady- was more like on & off & it wasnt everyone. Live shrimp & fiddlers were the ticket (though cut shrimp worked on occasion). Drop straight down or under the pier. But what else was interesting was there was a group that were concentrated on getting mullet- am sure most of the time they were snatching them but I thought I saw some being caught on hook in the morning. And these were big black ugly looking ones- the biggest mullet I have ever seen- I thought we had some big horse mullet on the east coast but some of those being brought up were huge. That seemed pretty steady. Any locals over there have any ideas what that is about?

No pictures to show, but was hoping to get some shots of either the mullet being caught on hook (which I find almost hard to believe) or some of those monster size ones just coming over the rail- oh yeah was some real big sheepheads coming up as well. Or of me teasing this tough little artic tern who was planted on the fish cutting table (I like the idea of the saltwater hand pumps that have a pipe that runs into the water & the huge fish parts tubes that runs down below, also).

edit- it was cold on the 4:30am driveover & it was real wind chill cold out on the little pier most of the morning- glad we were prepared!