December 2016 Fishing Report I started the month with a little R&R and Pre-Fishing . My wife and I rented a small cottage on Little Captiva Island, which is in East Pine Island Sound between Boca Grande and Sanibel Island. I have a client who is staying on Sanibel this year instead of his usual location of Boca Grande , and even though I’ve fished this area before, it’s a little farther south than my regular grounds of Charlotte Harbor and North Pine Island. The plan was to do a little relaxing while getting more familiar with the waters near Sanibel. The first two days the wind was blowing from the east at 20 knots so I stayed close to the cottage, catching numerous small trout, along with a mix of lady fish and jacks, in the 4-foot grass flats. After that, I ran to the beach side of Captiva to get out of the wind and found small schools of mackerel scattered around. On our third and fourth days there, the weather was perfect. I fished around York, Chino, and Regia Islands as well as Panther, Mackeever, and Wulfert Keys. I saw and blew out numerous red fish and snook but they had a little post front lock jaw. I ended catching and releasing 7 red fish and 4 respectable snook and a number of trout, using mostly D.O.A. Cal Shad Tail and Zoom Super Flukes, and I also managed to catch one red and one snook on DT special flies. I had a blast catching mangrove snapper up to 15” on small clouser minnow flies in the canals of St. James City. In the evenings, while my wife and I enjoyed the sunset, I caught numerous Pompano in Captiva Pass while jigging Chartreuse pompano jigs . The rest of my trips in Charlotte Harbor, redfish were plentiful along the west wall and pompano on the outside of the bar. In and around Bull Bay, Turtle Bay and Whiddens Creek, water temps were still in the 70s. The snook bite was still strong, and I also caught a few Redfish, trout, flounder and ladyfish, all on D.O.A. Cal Shads and Zoom Super Flukes. Early to mid-December, Sarasota Bay had some red tide, but if you found clean water the fishing was good. Anglers fishing with me caught large trout, blue fish, and ladyfish using D.O.A. Deadly Combos in the North Bay on deep flats inside Long Bar. I fished between midnight Pass and Venice Inlet a couple times trying to get away from the red tide, and we found schools of medium size jacks busting bait along the sea walls and docks that were a blast on the fly rods. In the deeper flats, the ladyfish were going off and they were up to 24 inches. If you wanted to catch anything else you really had to slow down your retrieve, and when we did we caught few mackerel with some trout mixed in. Most all these fish were caught on red and gold, chartreuse and baby bass colored D.O.A. Cal Shad Tails, Deadly Combos and Deep Clouser minnows.