Consensus is that trout are larger and more plentiful than in the recent past.

Dave Gibson eased the boat in across the flat and quietly lowered the anchor. He dipped out a net full of greenbacks from the livewell, squeezed a big handful to stun them, and dropped them into a cut-off whiffle ball bat. Then he stepped up onto the bow and slung the baitfish in a scattering swath into the pothole 20 yards in front of the boat. Two of the greenies immediately began swimming in circles on their sides. About five seconds later first one, then the other, disappeared in loud splashes.

“Uh-huh, I thought so,” Gibson said. He poked a No. 2 hook through the back of a greenback, flipped it over near a pile of hurricane debris and quickly hooked up. When he eased the fish over the gunwale it was a 17-inch spotted seatrout.

“Nice one,” I said. “Let’s get some more.”

We were getting started later than we had wanted, but still there were no other boats around. The reason was simple: We had ridden five miles up Pine Island Sound at less than half speed from the Punta Rassa boat ramp in a pea-soup fog. Most of the other boats had left after us and running at cruising speed would have been an invitation to disaster.

Gibson, an 18-year veteran guide on Southwest Florida’s Pine Island Sound, and I were after spotted seatrout, one of my favorite fish and a species hugely abundant in these waters.

According to Dr. Stephen Bortone, biologist with the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation’s Marine Research Laboratory, the shallow waters between Pine Island and the barrier islands of Sanibel and Captiva comprise one of the world’s best spotted seatrout fisheries.

How good is it? Good enough that Bortone, who edited the book Biology of the Spotted Seatrout and prides himself in maintaining a sense of scientific detachment, struggles not to speak in hyperbole when discussing the topic.

The Pine Island Sound trout population, Bortone says, is “orders of magnitude higher than all of the other south Florida counties....We just have tremendous numbers of spotted seatrout coming out of this particular system.”

With funding from the South Florida Water Management District, Bortone is heading a study of seatrout as an indicator of overall estuary health. “What we’ve been advocating is that spotted seatrout are one of the great indicators of conditions in estuaries because it’s one of the few fish that spends its whole life in its home estuary,” Bortone says.

Sanibel local Scott Messinger works mangrove overhangs along high tide shorelines.

Traditionally, SFWMD has been on the short list of many South Florida anglers’ most despised agencies because of its mismanagement of Lake Okeechobee water levels. In recent years, the District has kept the lake at high levels during dry seasons, prompting huge subsequent discharges of fresh water down the Caloosahatchee River, at the southern end of Pine Island Sound. These unnatural surges damage grassflats, oyster bars and the fish populations that depend on them.

At least for now, seatrout are more than holding their own in Pine Island Sound. Bortone cites four main keys to their abundance: “We have high-salinity water, lush seagrass beds, relatively clean water and a lot of invertebrates that trout like to feed on.” This combination of “the right stuff” sustains a first-rate fishery.

The most important factor in the area’s thriving seatrout population is evident not just to marine biologists, but to any knowledgeable angler. “Pine Island Sound has some of the most incredible seagrass beds in the country,” Bortone says. “There may be other places where they’re thicker and denser and larger, but I couldn’t think of any.” The point is underscored by even a casual glance at the chart on the Boater’s Guide to Lee County; the sound is dominated by huge expanses of green that indicate grassflats.

The estuary’s relatively high salinity is ideal for prolific seatrout reproduction during the warm months, usually April through October. Abundant food sources spark growth rates that are the highest in the state, up to 10 inches the first year. “There are not only more of them, but they’re growing faster,” Bortone says.

He says this fact is not inconsistent with reports that some of Florida’s biggest seatrout are caught in East Coast estuaries. In some of those areas, Bortone says, fish may live a year or two longer because of cooler waters. A seatrout lifespan is five to seven years. Typically, a 4-year-old female will be about 18 inches, a male 14 inches.