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Windy Weather Hampers Anglers

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 28, 2008

The wind continued to blow throughout much of May, making it tough to get out in anything but an offshore boat.

Every year the winds of March seem to extend deeper into spring, and blow a little harder. I guess we will have a dead flat, calm day sometime in July.

Catch-and-release action on snook should begin at the spoil island this month off Port Manatee, but you need a permit to fish there. Capt. Tom Rinehart and I passed by on our way to Joe Island recently and nobody was fishing there, but the tide was incoming and it was windy. A strong falling tide on the new or full moon is best at the tip of the island.

We decided to run south after having no luck on redfish in Little Cockroach Bay, The back side of Joe Island is usually a safe bet for redfish on a high tide, but that didn't pan out either. It was a long bumpy ride for naught.

A few days earlier I got out with James Johnigan of Plant City and we had better luck. We caught a few trout off Pinellas Point, then hooked up with some schoolie mackerel in the middle of the Bay. They were feeding on glass minnows near the ship's channel.

A funny thing worth mentioning was we were using two rods, identical in every respect, rigged with the same chrome spoons. One rod caught all the fish while the other never had a bump.

One spoon was rigged with a split ring and a barrel swivel, and the other tied directly to the leader. That was the only difference I could see, but you can bet I'll be taking the swivel and the split rings off the rest of my mackerel spoons.

Capt. Chet Jennings told me that the South Shore fishing was tough last week. He said he found a few redfish, but the snook bite was slow. He did catch a keeper-sized cobia off the mouth of the Little Manatee River, where he saw a pair of fish swimming along with a bull shark.

Traffic on Tampa Bay will be down through the first week in July as many of the local guides are off to join the conga line at Boca Grande.

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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