We trolled around countless mangroves, looking for redfish, seatrout and snook. Cooney hooked up to the biggest trout of the day in one of these mangrove cuts.

Norm at Captain Pips went through a safety run with Cooney. We had some live mullet ordered, but it wouldn’t be at Captain Pips until 2:30. So we went across the street to get some live shrimp.

We were supposed to be fishing offshore today with Capt. Lee Lucas but the seas were upward of 3 to 5 feet. So that didn’t work out. Instead, we were lucky to meet Chris and Christy Johnson with SeaSquared Charters at Porky’s.

We had no problem finding the place, and to our surprise we had the privilege to have two captains today. We had Capt. Lucas, with his Spotless 30-foot Angler, and Capt. Jim Griffith with Angler Management Charters.

We have never done this kind of sight fishing before; we learned to love it instantly. There is such sport in having to perfectly execute the cast and retrieval. Cooney caught another nice trout and I lost a big red.

Then it was on to sample Stuart’s night life, fishing the lighted docks. We met Drew Wickstrom, Florida Sportsman’s art director, at the ramp and set off for a little wading on a nearby flat before sunset.

The sunset was beautiful! We spent a couple of minutes throwing D.O.A. shrimp at the creek near our site and I hooked a for-sure slot-size flounder that broke my line.