I had a cool trip with Scott and his son Jacob. Scott told me that they mainly fished for bass and pike and that he had flats fished in the 10,000 Islands years ago and Jacob had never been snook fishing before. So with the excitement building for them,

I couldn't wait to get them on some snook especially Jacob.

First thing in the morning it was time for bait and it is solid on most of the flats.I anchored up and it took a solid 20+ minutes to get the amount behind the boat before I threw the net the first time but the wait paid off with approximately 200 baits in the first throw and about the same on the second. Sometimes when you are chumming don't throw as soon as you see the first signs of bait wait a few extra minutes and let them get complacent and really ball up before you throw.I am getting ready to leave and I wave a couple of guys over that are looking for bait and tell them to set up where I already have the bait chummed up since they took a little bit to get to the boat.

Now its off to pick up the clients but I have some spare time since bait went well. So I hit a few spots in the area and chummed just to check out some more options.Then it was time so I pulled up to the dock tied off and a few minutes later they arrive and its off to go fishing.I had seen some topwater action on some of my chummers over deeper water so we made a short stop and Jacob caught a jack witch gave him a nice little fight.He was ready for a picture but dad said there were better ones that he was going to catch and I agreed.

So off to the Gandy area we went to fish the mangroves and flats. So we worked the flats first while I waited for more water to come in but it never came in good.While on the flats we did see some healthy snook but at that time they were not feeding not even on the chummers so we changed locations to find some happy snook and that was a great move.Before long Scott and Jacob both had snook under their belt.Probably the most exciting snook of the day was when I made a cast for Jacob under the mangroves and got the instant hit from a hyper 25 incher that at first Jacob wouldn't take the rod from me and then I finally coaxed him to catch the fish and after a good little battle for the little man he boated a nice one but it poked him while trying to get the picture and that was the end of that photo op. But after a few minutes of the special ice he was doing good.

The set up was 7' 6" medium rods, loaded with 10 Lb braid, 30 lb flourocarbon leader and 2/0 owner mutu light circle hooks.

Side note if your chummers are getting blasted consistently but your bait on the hook can't buy a bite switch down to a 1/0 hook and 20-25 lb leader. It is rare that I have to do this but occasionally that's the ticket.

Here are some pics from the day

Here are the happy father and son after a good days fishing