Captain’s Corner: Tyson Wallerstein

The Tampa Bay Times

This past weeks cold snap has been a shock to the system. With 80 degree temperatures now a thing of the past, its time to change gears and focus more on winter patterns.

New moon low tides and a north wind component will have grass flats exposed for much of the morning this week. The Intercoastal Waterway is a great low tide fishery, many of the grass flats have a hard outer edge the drops relatively quick either into a channel or a deeper basin. It’s these edges that that will concentrate trout and redfish, methodically working these edges with soft-plastics is a great way to cover a lot of water much more quickly than with live shrimp.

Spoils islands in the northern reaches of our area stack up with large trout this time of year. The trout typically prefer the deeper side of the island where the grass transitions quickly from grass to shell bottom. Bouncing soft-plastics along the bottom with the tide will produce lots of action not only from trout but ladyfish, small jacks, bluefish and pompano.

Sheepshead are schooled up around area bridges, fresh pieces of shrimp, fiddler crabs or barnacles paired up with a small gap hook and little weight are all you’ll need to catch a few.  The legal size for a sheepshead is 12 inches; however the yield on them isn’t very good so you may want to focus on those that are 14 inches and up.
Capt. Tyson Wallerstein
Flats Monster Inshore Fishing
(727) 692-5868
capt.tyson@hotmail.com
www.Flatsmonster.com