http://www.tampabay.com/sports/outdoors/Captain-s-Corner-With-Red-Tide-a-big-decline-in-fish_170987867
This past mid-week we were scouting for the St. Pete Open spearing tournament, which was held Saturday (more at stpeteopen.com/). We ran directly west of Venice to see if the Red Tide had made its way from the shoreline to 50 miles or more from shore. At the dock in Venice, we saw grunts, puffers, snapper and grouper dead on the concrete ramp incline. On our way out of the inlet we couldn’t get out of the stench of long dead fish. We stopped in 130 feet, about 45 miles offshore, and all that was home on one of our good spots was one Goliath grouper, a cadre of American red snapper and a blue striped grunt. There were no grouper. So out to 150 feet we went and once again, nothing of any consequence. Only a couple red snapper were on the bottom. Finally, we went out to 165 feet and traveled from the south to north for over 30 miles and we found only the same vacant bottom structures. We did over 12 dives between all our divers and we only saw two undersized red grouper for the whole day. We never saw a black, gag or scamp grouper. Last year at this time, this big area of the Gulf of Mexico produced many fish for us. This is where we speared the 2017 St. Pete Open tournament-winning black grouper. What a difference the Red Tide made!
Bill Hardman teaches scuba, spearfishing and free diving through Aquatic Obsessions Scuba in St. Petersburg and can be reached at (727) 344-3483 and captainbillhardman@gmail.com.
- Jay Mastry - March 26, 2024
- Captains Corner, Gorta - March 23, 2024
- Dave Zalewski - March 12, 2024
