Captain’s Corner: Dave Zalewski

The Tampa Bay Times

Dave Zalewski

Those of us that fish offshore in our area have so much to be thankful for. We are blessed with mostly calm seas in the gulf compared to many areas that have to contend with windy conditions along with rough seas on most days. Our slowly dropping depths and limestone areas provide for great bottom fishing year around as opposed to volcanic islands and even the east coast where water depths drop dramatically leaving relatively small areas to target the various species of grouper and snapper. We have the ballet of nature in both the spring and fall where the migratory species like kingfish, bonita, cobia , and blackfin tuna provide drag screaming often non stop action.
At this time we are experiencing the best of both benthic (bottom) fishing and trolling for pelagic species. On a recent trip we trolled for and caught Spanish mackerel even before we got to the John’s Pass bridge. Kingfish and barracuda were caught trolling both live bait and hardware on the near shore and mid water artificial reefs. The party we had onboard practiced “Limit your catch and don’t catch your limit “ and soon asked to release the rest of the trolling fish that were caught. It is not necessary and often is unsafe to bring toothy fish onboard to release them. Running a gaff down the line while the angler keeps it taut and the mate lifts up usually releases the fish.
There is an old saying “Don’t leave fish to catch fish”, but when targeting both bottom fish and trolling fish it is often necessary. The 70 foot depths provided a colorful box of fish consisting of both red and gag grouper, Lane snapper, white grunts, porgies and black sea bass.
Returning to port and opening the fish box revealed a horn of plenty.