The Tampa Bay Times

Snook fishing this past week has been fun. They have come out of their spring holes and are willing to eat anything in sight. The season for snook will remain closed thru Aug. 31, 2022. Charters have been catching a lot of undersized sized snook. The Piney Point disaster last year put a hurt on the snook population around Pinellas point. I am happy that we are able to catch fish.  Filling the live well with scaled sardines is a must. A 12ft cast net makes getting bait a lot easier. I like to fill the bait well and have as many baits as possible.  A great technique to use is to make a few casts with a sardine, if you do not get a strike, put a new bait on, this always keeps the bait fresh on the hook.  I like to use a size 1/0 hook.  This allows the bait to swim naturally.  A hook that is too big will cause the bait to sink to the bottom. Snook have sandpaper like teeth; so, thirty-pound camouflage leader is a must to prevent fish from wearing through the leader. Very small schools of redfish have showed up on the flats around Tierre Verde.  Once I stop snook fishing, I move to find a school of reds. When I find them, I throw a couple of live bait chummers to see what kind of mood they are in.  If a fish explodes on one of the baits, then I start chumming more aggressively, the goal is to keep the redfish in a feeding frenzy.  This action is fast and furious, with redfish exploding everywhere on the chummers that are thrown.  If the reds are spooked from live bait, then I will switch to cut bait.  It is a slower process, but effective if the fish are spooky. Captain Rob Gorta727-647-7606www.captainrobgorta.com

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