By Capt. Justin Napior
The new year is in full swing and so is the fishing! The winter tripletail and redfish bite has been amazing. Tripletail are a super fun fish to target for any skill level, you can use live bait, artificial, and fly! What makes them so fun is the fact that it’s all sight fishing. They can be found hanging around your local crab trap buoys or any floating structure. They put up a great fight and personally I think they are one of the best tasting fish around.
This picture I’ll never forget. The way I caught my triple was hilarious! We were using live shrimp, I made a good cast inches from the buoy and my shrimp swam through the eye of the rope that attaches to the buoy! The triple tail hammers the shrimp and now I’m fighting him with my line through the loop in the rope! Luckily I was able to finesse him back to the buoy and our buddy Jared netted both of them! I unhooked mine and reeled my line back through the loop in the rope!
239-734-5030
The redfish have also moved in with the cooler water temps and can be found cruising Naples and the Ten Thousand Islands. This was another day I’ll never forget; my buddy Scott and I were fishing a local tournament and we needed to catch a big redfish. We stopped at my first redfish spot of the day and came across a nice school of large reds! Scott made a cast and caught a beautiful 28 inch red! Which put us on the board! After that we were about to leave when his line takes off again! Another nice red, this time 29.5 inches! Right as were about to leave I saw something large pushing down the mangroves, I told Scott to make a cast real quick. Boom!! A nice 31.75 inch redfish! We were psyched. We ended up taking first place in the tournament! The winter fishing has been great, but spring is around the corner and that means one thing for me. Tarpon season!! Hope everyone has a great February.
Tight lines!! Capt. Justin Napior is the owner of Backcountry Culture Fishing out of beautiful Naples FL.. Specializing in snook and tarpon. If you’re looking for some SWFL fishing contact him at capt.jnapior@gmail.com or call 239-682-7101