On the Water: Fishing the coldest months: two steps forward …
Other than a day or two, it was a pretty tough week fishing around Pine Island and Southwest Florida. Cold, wind and poor tide movement all factored into the fishing equation most of the week.
With cold fronts rolling in every few days accompanied with strong northerly winds, it’s been very difficult for anglers or fish, for that matter, to establish any type of pattern. With the cold, sheepshead was the best thing going with some good reports, but even the sheepshead bite wasn’t up to par by many reports.
The larger sheepshead are full of eggs and ganging up around structure near the gulf passes. With the slower tides some of the better catches came from areas around Redfish, Captiva and Boca Grande passes, plus under docks near the Sanibel Causeway. Also, look for schools of fish roaming the surf just off the beaches.
Many areas with concentrations of sheepshead are also holding decent numbers of black drum, most are averaging 17 to 24 inches and often difficult to entice them to bite. Flounder and pompano were also caught, but in no big numbers.
Catching sea trout hasn’t been too big of a problem, but catching many in the keeper size was a challenge throughout the inshore waters. A few areas where larger fish were noted included bar drop-offs near Captiva Pass, deeper grass areas off Rocky Channel and 4 to 6-foot depths off bar edges between St. James and Sanibel’s Tarpon Bay.
I have to think trout fishing is going to make a huge upswing in the upcoming weeks.
With the cold, windy days, the larger redfish reported were scattered and caught on cut bait off the eastern side of Pine Island Sound. Soaking cut pinfish, ladyfish or shrimp on the bottom of sand holes adjacent to shallow grass flats worked for a few nice reds to 28 inches. Smaller reds, most below 18 inches, were caught from creeks near St. James and also Sanibel’s “Ding” Darling. Most were caught on small jigs tipped with shrimp.
Over a few days with light wind and slow tides the best option was targeting mangrove snapper around the Gulf passes. Limits of snapper to 13 inches were reported; live shrimp fished off bottom the best bait.
Offshore, the fishing is good when the weather cooperates. Limits of red grouper, plus a mixed bag of mangrove and lane snapper, grunts and porgies, were boxed while targeting depths between 65 and 80 feet.
Two step forwards and one step back, that’s how I always feel about fishing as we close out our coldest months. The weather and fishing get on a good role for a few days, then Mother Nature steps in and sets us back. Good thing with our weather, the cold never lasts long and warm days with good fishing will resume.
If you have a fishing report or for charter information, please contact us at 239-283-7960, Website www.fishpineisland.com or email gcl2fish@live.com
Have a safe week and good fishin’.