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Winter Tides Move Manatees Into Traffic - Watch Out

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 30, 2008

Updated: 01/28/2008 07:33 pm

Winter fishing turned colder with plenty of wind in the latter part of January.

North winds exacerbated extreme low tides and there were several days where the oyster bar at the mouth of the Little Manatee River was out of the water from sunrise to sunset.

Capt. Danny Guarino of Ruskin said he fished the river in some of the worst weather and did poorly. Not only was there no water, there was no activity either.

The only jack crevalle he saw were the dead from the New Year's Day cold front when water temperatures dropped more than 10 degrees overnight. Fishing the flats was impossible, as there was no water all the way out to the 6-foot line for several days.
Winter tides put much of the manatee protection zone high and dry between Apollo Beach and Joe Island, especially when the wind honks out of the north.

Where do the manatees go when the tides are this low? Outside of the poles marking the 6-foot line, of course. Unfortunately, this is where all the boat traffic is.

On Christmas Eve, I fished with my buddy Tom Rinehart, and we narrowly missed four groups of manatees between Mangrove Point and E.G. Simmons Park.

The only reason we missed them was because I was running at 3,000 revolutions per minute looking for cobia. People in much bigger, faster boats would have blown right over them.

A week later in the same area, I saw four more pods of manatees 50 yards outside of the idle-speed zone. If there has not been a manatee hit by a boat propeller on this stretch of water it's a miracle.

A little common sense would have gone a long way when it came to deciding where to place the poles delineating the idle-speed zone. By placing them on the edge of the drop off, it has manatees and boat traffic running the same route between Apollo Beach and Mangrove Point.

To exacerbate the problem, the county sells permits to commercial fishermen, crabbers and fishing guides that allows them to run inside the poles on plane. I checked a month or so ago and found that the county has issued 25 permits.

So you have 25 boats that can run inside the 6-foot line on plane. But there is a catch: They are only allowed a maximum speed of 25 mph.

Most of the big bay boats favored by fishing guides will barely stay on plane at that speed. The rest of the public is restricted to idle speed - the slowest speed at which a boat moves forward.

In the meantime, all you can do if you travel the outside edge of the manatee zone is to keep your eyes open and your speed down. The manatees obviously can't read, and even if they could, there isn't enough water on the flats this time of year to float one.

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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