Captain’s Corner: Dave Zalewski

The Tampa Bay Times

Dave Zalewski 460-9893

Michael Buffer, the ring announcer, often starts out with “It’s Tiiime”. Well, it’s time to break out the trolling gear The Spanish mackerel finally showed up in good numbers and the kingfish, cobia and bonita will not be far behind. We have pinfish traps about 3 miles offshore and when pulling one it was hard not to see the schools of bait and fish on the depth finder. After emptying and re-baiting the trap. We put out #1 planers, 30 feet of 40 pound test leader and small gold and silver spoons and were greeted by an almost immediate hookup from a Spanish mackerel. This continued, with a few small fish released, until we had enough for each person onboard to have several meals. We could have caught our limit, the way they were biting, but we try to practice “Limit our catch, don’t catch our limit” so as to leave some fish for the future. On subsequent days we caught Spanish mackerel by trolling in the channel on the way out of John’s Pass, within a quarter mile offshore near Blind Pass and on the mitigation reefs.
We felt that since the mackerel were abundant so close to shore that surely they would be on the near shore artificial reefs. Trolling both Madeira Beach and Treasure Island reefs resulted in dragging holes in the water. We never experienced a bite. This will change as soon as the baitfish establish themselves on those reefs
Offshore the red grouper bite has been on the slow side, but there are several other species to target Hogfish are now grouping up on hard rocky limestone outcroppings in 40 to 60 feet of water and can be targeted using a knocker rig and live and frozen shrimp or fiddler crabs. White grunts can be caught often two at a time using squid or sardines on a double hook dropper rig. The red grouper that we have been catching seem to be not willing to strike a live pinfish, but are eager to ingest squid or Spanish sardines or threadfins.