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Fishing Warms With Weather

Photo by FRED EVERSON

Marc "Bird" Glass of Riverveiw caught this keeper sheepshead at the mouth of the Little Manatee River on a live shrimp rigged on a jig head.

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 17, 2008

Early December fishing in the South Shore waters of Tampa Bay has been more productive than in the month of November. It has been unseasonably cold for late fall fishing, and then we got a sudden reprieve of light winds and moderate temperatures.

If you have to pick your fishing days a month in advance, it's all trust to luck. If you have the flexibility to pick your days when the wind is down and the tide is right, you can do better.

There are a few redfish around, and I hooked two on a plastic crab on my last trip. I like to modify the crabs a bit by inserting a piece of leader wire into one claw and extending it away from the body. This is how blue crabs swim when threatened, and my initial tests were successful. This is a good lure to throw at fish you can see over bare sand, as many of the redfish I clean this time of year have small blue crabs in their guts.

I am not seeing as many redfish on this side of the bay this year compared with 2007, but there are enough fish to keep me coming back. That could change any day, but thus far, the west side of the bay has been way more productive.

Trout season in Tampa Bay will reopen New Year's Day. The end of the season, around Halloween, was promising. I hooked two trout in the 23-inch class just before the season closed, and those are nice fish by Tampa Bay standards.

Since the season closed, I haven't heard much from snook fishermen. The water temperature has been in the low 60s for weeks, and snook are not active when it's that cool.

I haven't seen any sardines on the flats for weeks. There is still some bait on the range markers and at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, but it's deep.

I caught a few cobia ahead of the last cold front. They were on the flats in skinny water, and a couple of times they were laid up on the bottom, motionless, just like nurse sharks. I don't know what this behavior is all about, but every time I have found cobia sitting still on the bottom, they eat.

Thus far, none of the fish I've boated have been big enough to keep. They've all been a couple of inches short. That's fine by me, as I don't really care for them. The flesh is fine grained and looks good but has a muddy taste to my pallet.

I saw a few sharks on my last trip, and why they come and go on the flats is a mystery to me.

Sometimes, I encounter hundreds and hundreds of bonnetheads on the flats, only to go back the next day and see just a few. These fish are bottom feeders. They will readily eat a strip of frozen squid, live and frozen shrimp, and a variety of cut bait.

Fred Everson is a Ruskin fishing guide. All South Shore fishermen and guides may submit information and photographs to be included in this column by calling (813) 830-8890 or sending an e-mail to ihuntsnook@aol.com.

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