Dave Zalewski 727 460-9893
Recent strong westerly winds have caused us to cancel many trips lately especially when families with children are involved. The primary concern should be that kids and grandkids have a great time without worrying about how the boat is rocking or having to hold on to something when fishing offshore. The west winds tend to stir up the bottom causing dirty water conditions that are not conducive to trolling near the shore for Spanish mackerel which should be in abundance for the rest of the summer into fall. Because of the long duration of these winds trolling should be started on the near shore artificial reefs that are 5 to 7 miles from shore. If the water appears silty, we don’t spend much time and proceed to one of the mid-water reefs such as South County or Indian Shores keeping a sharp lookout for diving birds or fish striking the surface on the way. Fragile baitfish which normally are near the shoreline for protection cannot endure the large waves building up and will move offshore along with their attendant predators to a more comfortable depth.
Barracuda, bonita and mackerel have established residence on the mid water reefs and can be caught by those trolling spoons or live bait caught on site. These reefs are a ¼ mile square around the GPS co-ordinates for the middle of them. Each of these reefs has large high profile structure consisting of barges, piles of concrete and culvert on them and the baitfish and predators will be close to the structure.
Many anglers have given up on kingfish, but there are enough around that have stayed in our area instead of migrating to the Panhandle, Spending some time trolling on the wrecks in 60 to 90 feet is often productive. When bottom fishing deploying two flatlines, one with a live Spanish sardine or hardtail and one with a frozen sardine that is allowed to sink down into the water column will often produce a bonus kingfish.
- Jay Mastry - March 26, 2024
- Captains Corner, Gorta - March 23, 2024
- Dave Zalewski - March 12, 2024
