On the Water: Fishing improves with warmer days
With the exception of a few foggy mornings and a stiff breeze on Sunday, boating conditions were about perfect for the week.
Calm Gulf waters allowed boats to run west to the grouper grounds and smaller vessels to get on good action within sight of land. Boat limits of red grouper were boxed fishing depths from 90-120 feet while bouncing a variety of baits off bottom, including squid, sardines, cut mullet, ladyfish and blue runners.
Fishing the same depths with shrimp or cut bait on lighter tackle yielded a variety of snapper and porgy.
Bottom fishing 30 to 50-foot depths was good for sheepshead, snappers and grunts. It’s common for all the species to be mixed together over good bottom. The bite can start slow, then pick up as feeding activity increases, and the scent of the baits spread out. If you know you are fishing over good bottom, give it a little time to get a bite going before giving up.
Live and cut shrimp fished on bottom with a variety of weighted rigs is the way to go for this type of fishing. If the bite is slow, experiment with different rigging techniques.
A few keeper-size tripletail were also caught in these depths casting freelined shrimp to fish hanging under buoys.
Fishing along the beaches from Blind Pass up to Boca Grande Pass, anglers hooked into whiting, grey and spotted seatrout, plus sheepshead. Most fish were hooked on quarter-ounce jig heads tipped with shrimp with a slow bouncing retrieve along the surf and adjacent bar edges.
Each day the water warmed a little and the inshore bite improved. Redfish and seatrout were reported around Pine Island Sound, with the reds hanging along sandy shorelines on higher water and nearby sand holes on the low. With low tides, sunny skies and clear water, stealth is the key to hooking redfish. Reds up to 28 inches took shrimp rigged in a variety of ways, plus Gulp shrimp and gold spoons on the eastern side of Pine Island Sound and around Wulfert Keys.
No great numbers of big trout were reported, but fish up to 19 inches were caught west of Galt Island, south of the fish shacks and around Useppa Island. Most were hooked fishing around the perimeter of sand holes and over grass flats with live shrimp suspended under a bobber. A few trout and ladyfish were caught in Matlacha Pass between markers 71 and 74 along the channel edges.
Sheepshead were caught in their usual inshore hangouts that included docks and pilings around Punta Rassa and the Sanibel Causeway, the Matlacha Drawbridge, structure in and around the Gulf passes and deeper oyster bottom creeks around St. James City and Sanibel.
Let’s hope the warming trend and great weather continues.
Stay up to date with fishing regulations by visiting www.myfwc.com. Also, upload the Fish Rules app. It has current regulations and seasons with pictures to help identify fish.
If you have a fishing report or for charter information, please contact us at Gulf Coast Guide Service; phone (239) 410-8576, email gcl2fish@live.com or you visit us on the Web at www.fishpineisland.com
Have a safe week and good fishin’.
As a lifetime resident of Matlacha and Pine Island, Capt. Bill Russell has spent his life fishing and learning the waters around Pine Island and Southwest Florida, and as a professional fishing guide for over 20 years.