TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

South Shore Angler: Bait Fish Plentiful In Tampa Bay

Photo by FRED EVERSON

Tom White of Skipper's Smokehouse recently caught and released this snook during an outing with Capt. Fred Everson on the Little Manatee River.

ADVERTISEMENT

By FRED EVERSON

Tribune correspondent

Published: June 11, 2008

Bait has been everywhere in the Bay for the past few weeks.

The flats around Piney Point are covered with scaled sardines and pinfish, and the rest of the Bay is alive with threadfin herring.

I threw the net one time on some threadfins off Bahia Beach and loaded both live wells. I use threadfins primarily as cut bait for redfish and snook. It's important to put the bait on ice as soon as they die, otherwise they will turn to mush and not stay on the hook well.

Anglers reported hot fishing on South Shore last week.

I talked to Eke Akroyd and he told me he had a banner day fishing the falling tide in front of Mag's Hole. He said he caught and released five redfish, one of which was close to 40 inches, two slot-sized snook and two keeper trout. Capt. Art Piava also told me he too had a good day of catch-and-release action with snook.

A day later the bite slowed.

I went across the Bay with Tom White of Skipper's Smokehouse to catch some trout, and we did. But the bite was slow.

We saw quite a few fish, but they were nothing like aggressive. In three long drifts across the deep-water grass flats off Pinellas Point, we put three keepers in the box, and released as many shorts.

On the last drift, we had a plug cut off by either a bluefish or a Spanish mackerel. I suspect the action would have picked up as the tide started to fall in the late afternoon, but we started at midmorning and were back to our side of the Bay before the tide got moving.

On the South Shore side of the Bay we were going to look for redfish south of Sand Key, but the wind had the tide pushed out farther than what was predicted. When I had to get out of the boat to push us across a sand bar, it was time to get off the flats.

I decided to try some of the deep holes in the Little Manatee River for snook. We had a live well full of bait from the other side of the Bay, and I was able to put out a lot of chum. Even so, we only caught and released a single short snook, and had few pops on the chum.

Capt. Billy Jordan told me he didn't have much luck trolling for grouper last week, but put a keeper in the box. Cleaning that fish solved the mystery - the grouper was full of pass crabs. The fish feed on the crabs all night and rest all day, hence the slow bite.

Best tides for the coming week will be the fall in the afternoon, particularly toward the weekend as the full moon approaches and moves a lot of water.

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.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT