Fishing in Chokoloskee with LLGF Ft. Lauderdale Chapter!

The LLGF Ft.Lauderdale Chapter planned an outing to Chokoloskee Island this weekend. 16 girls showed up to fish and it was a total blast. We stayed in the trailers at Chokoloskee Island Park and chartered five boats for Saturday. [B]Capts. Herb Kehoe, Gary Thompson, Don Cochran, Becky Campbell and Ray Culver. [/B]
I was on Capt. Herb's boat with my friends Capt. Lee and Capt. Lanny. We started out the day catching bait and Lee even took a try on the castnet.


Then since the tide was so low, we decided to fish out front for the morning. My first cast of the day landed a 16 pound jack - that's one way to wake up....

After that, Lee caught a nice cobia and a redfish. We had the usual song and dance with the sharks and felt happy to get the cobia in the boat in one piece.

Things slowed down during slack tide and we had a few more jacks and some sharks,nothing exciting. Crabs were at a premium and we only had a few but on the incoming, we decided to chase the permit for awhile. 2 permit later, we were pretty happy. I thought sight casting to the pods was particularly awesome.

Next up, we only had about an hour left and no more bait (long story) so we decided to go throw some Berkley Gulps at the trout. That turned out to be a lot of fun and we had multiple trout in the 16-22 inch range. I personally don't like to eat trout, but Lanny wanted 'em, so she kept a couple.

We made the run back to the ramp, completely satisfied that we'd had a stellar day. We met up with the other girls and they all had equally awesome reports - I'm pretty sure every single person had a blast.

We had dinner and sat around the chiki hut telling fish stories till about 1 am.

On Sunday, we decided to "descend" upon the unsuspecting folks at City Seafood for some stone crabs. The kitchen clearly wasn't prepared for the onslaught of all us women combined with a couple of packs of motorcycles...They were pretty overwhelmed. My friend Amy, despite the fact that she's actually an attorney, decided to jump in and help out on the line and it was clear to us that this was not her first deep fryer rodeo! Amy stayed in the kitchen for about an hour and the rest of us drank beer and ate crabs. It was awesome.

So, now that the population of women on Choko has decreased by 50%, we are all back home and happy to have had such a fun weekend out there. All of the guides were awesome and treated the girls like gold. It was great.


~Jenn
LLGF Staff

Fun at the Florida Outdoor Writers Convention (FOWA)

I had a fun visit to the Florida Outdoor Writers Convention in Punta Gorda, FL Sept. 10-13. Lots of interesting topics! One of the coolest things was the breakout session, where we could see the latest and greatest in fishing equipment and accessories. Toyota had a cool video setup where you can see a video screen on your dashboard that helps in backing. So, if you're hooking up to a trailer by yourself, you can actually see the ball and trailer hitch meet. No more looking in the mirror at somebody flailing their arms and screaming to move over another inch, pull forward, turn, stop, stop, stop! What I hate is when you put the vehicle in park and it rolls forward - just far enough that you have to back up again! Pure Fishing had some neat things and brought some of those very efficient Berkley Gulp products. The ladies from the "Ladies, Let's Go Fishing!" seminar will enjoy the benefits of using these versus struggling to net and keep bait alive. Thermacell had some new mosquito repellent devices that work great. Just put in butane, no flames, and within minutes all the bugs disappear from around you.

I fished the tournament with Capt. Bart Marx of Alpha and Omega charters. My co-angler was Tom Johnson who writes for Waterline and does the Fumbling Angler column for several Gulf Coast newspapers. Capt. Bart's strategy was to land us an inshore slam. Tom whooped me when we tackled the trout but I got one, he got three. Then we moved to Bart's secret snook spot, with Tom and I elbowing each other to crank on a snook. We both did well with a total of 7 snook and were 2/3 on our way to getting a slam. Then the magic happened. We switched from pilchards to shrimp and something was chewing on my bait. I set five times, missing the fish, until, viola, I released a redfish! We stayed awhile longer but Tom just didn't have the chances. We moved to a dock and released a few more snook then it was time to go in. We were almost third place in the tournament. Since it was based on total length of the fish, we were beat by boats who released sharks or stayed in one place and caught ladyfish after ladyfish. It was a fun tournament and well run.

Punta Gorda is a nice, friendly place. I had a chance to check out some sites for a future LLGF seminar. So, ladies, what do you think? Would you come to Punta Gorda for a seminar or rather have a wild, wooly adventure in Chokoloskee/Florida Everglades or what? Please give your opinion to billfishbetty@hotmail.com