Inshore Grouper Fishing

This is the time of the year when you can go grouper fishing in a small boat without ever leaving sight of land. Today was one of those perfect days for this type of fishing trip. We had a light easterly wind in the morning, then dead calm around 1pm, then the west convection winds kicking up in the afternoon.
Unfortunately, this rock appears to have been fished hard recently. The best way to tell if an inshore rock has been fished, is the amount of tall seaweeds that are on the rocks. Typically when you catch a few grouper the fish will run for the cover of the rocks and your line tends to cut the seaweed down like a weed eater. And this was the case, after a nice warm growing season, the tall seaweeds where cut off at the roots. So my guess is someone else knows of this rock and recently fished it pretty hard. There was one piece of seaweed left which came up with this little grouper.
As you can see below there are no tall weeds left. Typically you can find rocks like this one by the tall seaweed. If the seaweed is not cut off by fishing or passing boats, they will grow to the surface.
The one little grouper 2 lb grouper minus the 3 lbs of seaweed.
The best part about inshore grouper fishing, is that the grouper on these rocks are not residents. Even after the rock has been fished out, the offshore grouper moving in to the shallow water will come across the rock and set up temporary residents. The key to a good inshore grouper rock is the rock most have good cover (hollow areas under the rock, tall grass) and plenty of near by food.

Good Luck
Zippyjr


Tide : Incoming
Water Clarity : Clear
Moon Phase: 3/4 full
Temp: 92 F
Water Temp :84 F
Wind: 0-5 mph West
Bait: Whitebait
Results: 1 short grouper, 5 hound fish and 1 mackerel.

Snook Season Is Approaching.

In a week snook season will open for the Gulf and it could not come soon enough. Earlier today my neighbor reported 3 nice size snook cruising past his dock. Almost every trip I took out to the Hernando Beach channel I ran across several snook, some over slot size. Over the past summer we encountered a great snook feeding frenzy. Based on the reports this should be a pretty good fall for snook.

Bait:

• Live bait: White bait, pin fish, sand perch, ballyhoo and shrimp work well
• Lures: Long A boomer, Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow, D.O.A. and MirrOlure.

Live bait of course is the best bet for snook fishing. Lures work well but are a lot of work.

Finding snook:

The easiest place to find snook would be the Hernando Beach channel. Day time fishing is best early or late in the day. You really can not fish on weekends, due to boat traffic, unless you fish at night. Night fishing is not for everyone and if you are not an avid boater and have good night vision, then you really should not attempt night fishing. At night the Hernando Beach channel becomes a very different place and at times pretty spooky. The best nights to fish is Sunday and Monday since many of the shrimpers take those day off. When I fish at night, I start out near market 3 then work my way back in. This way I have the back drop of the Hernando Beach lights to provide me with shadows of the cuts and islands help guide me. I also have every cut marked on my GPS and night vision goggles help out too. The snook tend to hang around the north side of the channel near the cuts and on the backside of the cuts at marker 23 out to marker 3.

Other good place for day time snook fishing is Centipede bay, its more of a challenge to find them, since there is a lot of area to cover. The snook tend to stay in deep in the creeks or in where the water runs fast and they are very spooky. Most of the time they start to move out before you can even get close. The way I solved this problem, is when ever I see a snook, I make a mental note of the location and tide phase. When I go back out to fish for snook, I first look at the area and see if there is anyway to keep the grass or a small island between me and the area I want to fish. This way I can see the fish from the casting platform, but the fish can not see the boat. One important note, if you move around they will see you standing, so when you make a cast make sure it is with as little movement as possible. Most of the time a simple pitch works. When sight fishing for snook live bait is a must. With the amount of effort it takes to sneak up on snook you don't want to risk your one shot with a lure that may spook the snook as soon as the lure hits the water.

Going south around dinner point is also a good place to look for snook. The water is very shallow, so don't venture there on a falling tide. Unless you packed a tent. The snook tend to hang just inside the many creeks in the area. White bait works great in this area, anchor up near the mouth of the creek a chum with live white bait. If the fish are there you will know it with in a few minutes. Typically if I fish that area, I also plan on fishing Aripeka. From Aripeka south you can find plenty of snook, trout and redfish.

Tackle:
You will want to use a 7 ft med action rod and matching reel. A good drag system is a must. I use a Shimano Stradic 2500 spooled up with moss green 15# power pro. I use about 3 feet of 30# fluorocarbon tied to the power pro with a uni to uni knot. Depending on the bait size will determine the what size live bait hook I use. I tend to use the smallest hook I can. If you plan on bait and wait fishing, you should use a circle hook. Only use live bait hook when you know you will be able to set the hook when the fish hits. This will reduce the number of gut hooked fish.

Even through I use 15# power pro, I typically only use 2 or 3 lbs of drag. Snook have a soft mouth (not as soft as trout) and many anglers lose fish due to the hook pulling. Take your time, wear out the fish and enjoy the challenge. Just make sure you properly handle and revive the snook before you release them. Take a look at the Floida Sea Grant web site on proper fish handling


Good Luck
Zippyjr.

Whitebait Report 08/12/09

With limited time, I decided to head out to the Hernando Beach Channel where we caught a lot of over sized redfish last time. Since it was late we decided not to work to hard too catch bait and use lures. I checked all the normal places and the only place I found the white bait was at the tri-pod. Millions of them, the only draw back was that they we about the size of my thumbnail.

That makes it official the white bait have spawned.

We did do a little ornamental fishing and caught 5 nice pipe fish, about a dozen sea serpent (starfish), about 50 ghost shrimp and about 25 stick shrimp. The seahorse and pipe fish really like to eat the stick and ghost shrimp.

If anyone knows what kind of shrimp this is please post a comment.



Tide : Incoming 1:04pm 0.6 L
Water Clarity : Clear
Moon Phase: 54 % full
Temp: 94 F
Water Temp : 86 F
Wind: 6 mph W
Bait: None
Results: None

Great Weather and Fishing in the Hernando Beach Cuts.

This was one of the better days fishing in the Hernando Beach cuts. Based on the recent trips to the cut, I thought it might be a difficult day fishing. But it was nice to be wrong.

We stopped at the Hernando Beach channel turn marker on the way to the cuts and the whitebait was plentiful. At the time I was hoping that there was not too much bait around. Last week when I fished the cuts there was so much bait that the fish did not try very hard to chase the bait.

The first cut we fished was marker number 21. After about 10 minutes I was about to move and just happened to look along the edge of the rocks and saw a couple of redfish cruising toward us.

The first redfish was 29 inches, just a little too big. I saw two other redfish chasing this one as I brought it to the boat. This one looked to be the biggest out of the group.

I released this one an grabbed another bait.

About a minute later I had the another redfish on. This time it was just over 23 inches and coming home for dinner.



I tossed out another bait and as soon as the bait hit the water I saw a fish come up from the bottom to hit the bait. Typically redfish do not do that and as it turns out it was 25 inch snaggled tooth trout.

After the trout things slowed way down. I could not see any more fish cruising the sand edges of the rocks. I was about to move when we hooked up with big sting ray. It pulled the boat through the cut, so I decided to move to the next cut to the west. The first fish was a decent trout about 23 inches.

I watched for redfish along the edges and not long after we got there I saw 3 redfish laying in along the edge. The next redfish came in at 26 inches and filled our limit. We had plans to have grilled redfish for our guest and did not want to disappoint our dinner guest.


After I caught that fish a school of over sized redfish moved in to the cut and it was no longer fishing, it was catching! We caught big redfish non-stop for the next hour. The best part about this was that I could see the redfish stacked up on the east side of the cut. So this was sight fishing while anchored. You do get to do that very often. There was a small school of whitebait and a school of redfish chasing them. I added couple of split shots to the line to get the bait closer to the bottom and slow the bait down so the redfish would have no trouble catching my bait. Everything bait that hit the water was greeted by a hungry redfish.

I took care of releasing each fish making sure it was revived

We had plenty of rod bending action

At this point we where getting tired, my wife hooked that last fish and it was the biggest fish of the day. She decided it would be best if she fought this fish marlin style...

The redfish put up a great fight.

After about a 15 minute fight I revived the last fish. We decided it was time to go swimming and relax after a great day fishing. When we left the redfish where still chasing baits and I'm sure we could have caught many more fish. However it is important not to over stress too many fish, especially in the same school. These fish will lay millions of eggs that will ultimately produce many more fishing/catching days like today!


Good Luck
zippyjr
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Tide : Falling 0.7 3:28pm
Water Clarity : Clear
Moon Phase: Third Quarter 45% full
Temp: 92F
Water Temp : 85F
Wind: 5-10 W mph
Bait: Whitebait
Results: 10 Over slot Redfish - 3 Redfish 23-26 - 3 Trout - 1 Jack - 1 Big String Ray.

Trout fishing in the cuts

The weather has been bad, for the last week or so. This morning we had some big thunder storms then it cleared up nicely, so I decided that I would go trout fishing around 10am.

Live well full of bait.

Since I knew the whitebait was in the Hernando Beach Channel, I figured it would be a quick stop for bait then hit the cuts. I found bait at the first turn in the channel.

Whitebait on the other side of the cut.

On the way out just before the first turn, I saw two big snook laying in against the bank. I thought about going back and fishing for snook, but there was a bit of boat traffic in the channel.

I saw more bait at marker 19 and decided to make that my first stop. I had a couple a strikes and lost a few hooks, I would guess is was Spanish mackerel. So I move out to the marker 3 and saw a couple of tarpon about 75# each chasing bait. I tossed out a bait but the where not interested. Of course I was not really too interested, since I only had 10# mono and 20# leader, it would have been a short fight.

I fished each cut back to marker 9. I saw trout and redfish swimming around and tossed out some bait. I lost on bait on a rock, which the only redfish I saw went over and ate the bait that I just broke off. So I'm sure the redfish felt the hook and headed out to try to dislodge the hook. A short while later I caught the first trout. I fished there for about an hour and picked up 4 trout and couple of catfish and ladyfish. The trout did not hit the bait aggressively, rather they slowly nibbled at it. I had several trout pop the top of the water only to allow the bait to get away. I also saw the tarpon rolling in the channel near marker 10.


Over a good short day fishing....

Storms Brewing Inland

Turned out to be a very nice day.

Tide : Raising 3.5H @ 2:57pm
Water Clarity : Clear
Moon Phase: Waning Gibbous 89% full
Temp: 88 F
Water Temp : 82 F
Wind: 0-5 v mph
Bait: Whitebait
Results: 4 trout

Tough Day Fishing, Great Day Snorkeling.

We went out today to continue to test the full moon theory, that the redfish tend to feed more at night than during the day. Since I had expected a slow day fishing, we did have a back up plan, we brought our snorkeling gear along, just in case.

We picked up whitebait near the two poles off the bayport channel. Over the last month I have really have not check any other area, since this area is very convenient. However each time, the whitebait numbers seem to be less and less. Today I could only get about dozen big baits, bigger then I wanted. The whitebait will spawn in August, and we'll have lots a little (too little) baits.

Fishing was a bust, we had two strikes both missed the hook. so I can not even call them and auto-release... We did a little lure fishing and had a couple of redfish follow the lure but no strikes. So it was time to go snorkeling.

We motored out to mark 21 in the Hernando Beach channel and I noticed what looked like glass minnows. As it turns out they where whitebait, the perfect size for redfish. Since we where done fishing we swam with the whitebait for while. It was really very interesting to see how the bait behaves. The bait seem to use us for shelter. Off in the distance I could see a couple of Spanish Mackerel cruising around the bait. While I do not recommend swimming in schools of bait fish, it was very interesting. And at least I now know where to find the right size whitebait.

We moved to a couple of other locations along the channel and found some green, red and white shrimp for our fish tank. As well as a sea horse, pipe fish and some scallops.

The seahorse is holding on to the and pipe fish.

Scallops, Pipe Fish and some grass.

Scallop and all eyes are on you...

One other interesting thing to note. Since this was a Sunday, I expected plenty of boaters on the "flats". When we got there there was only about 20 boats, I could here the motors while we where in the water. Once we got out of the water, it looks as if the boat parade had arrived. There must have been at least 80 boats...

Good Luck
Zippyjr

Summer time fishing

Today I took my wife fishing. While I usually fish alone, it is always very enjoyable to watch the excitement of someone else catching fish.

We fished the south side of the bay, where I have seen several small schools of over sized redfish. It took only a few minute to hook up with a ~30 inch redfish, after the first 50 yard run I knew it was over sized. My wife fought it for about ten minutes. With a couple of good runs out in to the bay. She lost it on a single mangrove shoot about 20 feet away from the boat. After 5 or 10 minutes of fighting a fish, it takes a lot of effort to keep the rod tip high. After the fish broke off, I was not sure who was more tired, the redfish or my wife. None the less it was exciting to watch the battle play out.

I decided to fish the north side of the bay, so we could get a redfish for dinner. The interesting thing about today, was the trout. While catching trout is not rare by any means, it where we caught the trout. There is a small area that usually holds redfish and occasionally a snook to two. This is an area I like to sight fish and I have fished this area about 10 years. Which I have never caught or seen a trout. This would lead me to believe that if the trout are moving this far back in to the bay, I would guess that this could be a really good year for trout.


After losing several other, prime dinner guest, we finally where able to get a redfish in the boat. This redfish looks like he was recently in a fight, you can see there is a bite taken out of a couple of it's fins. Even with the battle scares it was still outstanding on the grill.

Good Luck
Zippyjr

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Tide : Falling 9:50am 3.2ft
Water Clarity : Hazy
Moon Phase: 23% Full, Waning Crescent
Temp: 93 F
Water Temp : 85F
Wind: 5-7mph WNW
Bait: Whitebait
Results: 1 Redfish, 1 trout, 4 redfish auto release.

Snook Attack

Today a friend was visiting and wanted to go catch a few redfish. We headed out of Jenkins creek so we could pick up some whitebait on the way. We checked the area around the first turn maker and did not see any so we headed to tri-pod, nothing but big ballyhoo and pin fish. Checked smith rock, nothing. Went back to the turn marker and finally found 3 pods of bait. Over the last few weeks the turn marker is the only place I have found bait.

Once we loaded up with bait, we headed back to Centipede Bay. We spend too much time hunting bait and now the tide had turned. We only had about an hour to fish in the bay and hooked up with two redfish and lost them both! (That's called and auto release...)

The next up was the Hernando Beach Channel in the "cuts". The cuts are the deep reliefs between the rock piles that protect the channel from filling in with sand. I see many anglers there most seem to understand how to fish this area,. Today there was a couple of guys fishing and they anchored up in the middle of the cuts. This is where we catch fish, as you can image they left with out catching anything.

There is about 20 "cuts" along the north side of the channel

The place to anchor is about here and fish between the rocks

We moved from cut to cut tossing out live chum at each stop. One cut down from where the other guys where fishing, there was a big response from the chum. We could not tell what they where, but I suspected that they must have green backs that blended in well with the sea grass on the bottom. The one fish that size with a greenish back is a snook. We pitched a couple of baits with hooks and both of us hooked in to big snook.

The first pair broke off since I had trouble releasing the anchor and fighting the fish to give chase. The next one, I was ready and released the anchor and off we went. I use a trolling motor to chase the fish so it will not spook the other fish. We came back to the anchor thinking that we must have spooked the fish. Only to find another big response to the live chum. This went on for about an hour, then everything stopped. We ended up releasing 5 snook all the 10-12# range. The one draw back to this kind of actions is no one wants to stop and get the camera out to take pictures... Maybe one day I'll get a helmet cam...

The next cut we caught a couple of trout for dinner and decided it was time to call it a good day.

Good Luck
Zippyjr

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Tide : Falling : H 3.0 10:01 am : L 0.40 6:21pm
Water Clarity : Clear
Moon Phase: 78% full waxing gibbous
Temp: 78F
Water Temp : 85F
Wind: 5mph SE morning- 10mph W afternoon.
Bait: Whitebait (green backs, greenies)
Results: 5 Snook release - 2 Red Fish (auto release) - 2 trout

Playing the wind, water and tides

On the rare occasion when everything lines up just right, be prepared to seize the opportunity. A friend once told me that success is; preparation that meets opportunity. Over the last few weeks the weather was unpredictable, but today everything weather, tides, water, work and projects all lined up perfectly for an afternoon fishing trip. However this opportunity was not for the typical day fishing, this was something different.

The wind was blowing from the WSW at a pretty good clip. Since this was a late day trip, catching live bait, was out of the question. Not to mention the wind would make trowing the net difficult.

Throwing jigs is always a good alternative, but the tide was very high and the fish would undoubtedly moved far back in to the grass. While I could get lots of distance with a jig, I would be left to deal with snags in the grass, tress and maybe even a passing car...
Since the water was stained from the 12+ inches of rain this month and overcast conditions still persisted. There was one prefect fit for all of these condition, top water soft baits. These baits are light, but with a good wind to your back you can get the distance needed and the water is stained, which allows you to get closer to the fish and they tend not to spook easily. The sky was over cast, the best condition for top water fishing. Since a soft bait can be rigged to have no exposed hook, it can easily be thrown in to deep cover without getting snagged in the grass.
Over the past winter I happened to come across a bass fishing show where they where using a fat tail, plastic bait that tail would splash from side to side. The bass loved them, but to me they looked a lot like a crab swimming on the surface. When the conditions turned out prefect, I decided to test them out.

These lures sat around for about 6 months and I never had the right conditions to use them. But to today everything lined up just right. I had a few hours, the tide, wind, weather all worked in my favor.
While I only caught one fish, it was worth the effort. When a redfish hits a top water bait (they are designed to feed below their eye line) the fish is hungry and ready for a fight. And indeed that was the case.

Good Luck
Zippyjr...

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Tide : Top 3.4ft @ 4:41pm
Water Clarity : Stained
Moon Phase: 27% Full Waxing
Temp: 84F
Water Temp : 77F
Wind: 14 mph WSW
Results: 1 - 25" Redfish
Bait: Top water soft bait

Check List

It occurs to me that every time I am in a hurry to get out fishing, I seem to forget something. And today was no exception. After closing out our positions for the day and a few phone calls I was off. I had the whole day, no phones, no markets and no bad weather. Time to go fishing and hopefully beat the noon time convection winds.
Since it was dead flat, I decided to run over to Bayport to catch some whitebait. I spent about 30 mins looking, but never saw any. I picked up some mud minnows on the way back to centipede bay. Took my time getting in to the back of the bay, casting a few lures on the way. Final anchored up with a few lines out and ready for a tasty cold beverage, only to find the cooler was empty! Where's the drinks, where's the food and more importantly where's the ice. As it turns out I left a bag full of ice, food and drinks hanging on the back of the dinning room chair. That's a trip ender, reeled up the lines and went home to clean up the mess.

All of this could have easily been avoided by a simple check list (mental or paper).

Check list.... check!

Catching The Wind

The wind can be a real issue in a small boat and the winds near shore seem to have a mind of it's own. In general the weather service predicts the over all wind patterns for a large area. But the near shore can be effected localized variable, the temperature differences between the land and water. With the basic concept of the how the wind is created you can predict if the winds along the coastline will be worse or no as strong as the surrounding area.

We all know that hotter air will rise and colder air will sink. In the spring and fall the water mass will have a much different temperature then the land mass. In the spring the water mass is colder than the land mass and in the fall the land mass is colder than the water mass.

For today the water temp is 74 and the inland temp is 89 and the wind forecast was calling for 11mph WSW. But around 3pm we had gust up to 20 mph WSW. From these number we can make a simple observation. There is a 15 degree delta (a fancy word for difference in values) between the land and water and a 9 mph delta in the the forecast wind and the actual wind speed. Just from this one day I can derive that for every 2 degree delta in temperature there will be roughly 1 mph additional westerly component of the forecast winds. If the wind forecast was calling for 10 mph E winds I would expect a day like today would have almost no wind from about noon to 3pm. Since we would add 9 mph W to 10 mph E would give us a net 1 mph E wind. This is one reason why I keep track of the data at the top of each entry. I have several theories I would like to study over the next few years that involve the tide, wind, moon and temperatures.
That was your physics lesson for the day, who would have thought 12 years of college would be so useful.

Now to the important issues!
I left a little late today and the wind picked up before I have a change to get bait. I did not want to fight the wind and run to Bayport for whitebait. So I went with the ol standby mud minnows. In hindsight I should have looked harder for bait. I made one cast and caught 7 mud minnows. I went through all 7 in about 15 minutes. The second line was out about 30 sec before it was hit hard. An over sized red fish and a self release (aka the fish spit the hook). The fish left a torpedo wake through the grass and hit like a kingfish, that's when I knew I needed more bait! The second fish hit a few minutes later and was edger to come to dinner. Then a couple more misses and I was out of bait. I lure fished for about 30 minute in the howling wind and picked up a couple of rat reds. The places I fish, I normally do not catch small reds, but today I flushed out about 50 as the wind blow me in to the grass.


Showing off the "proper handling technique"...


Good Luck
Zippyjr

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Tide : Top 3.0ft @ 11:56pm
Water Clarity : Clear
Moon Phase: 88% Full: Waxing Gibbous
Temp: 89 F
Water Temp : 74 F
Wind: WSW 5 - 10 mph morning - WSW 10 - 20 mph afternoon
Results: 23 in Redfish 2 releases 1 ladyfish
Bait: Mud Minnows.

Fish Candy... Come and get it

Summer is here... I had a few hours mid day to go fishing... I heard reports that the whitebait has moved in to the Bayport area. Since the winds where calm I thought I would run over and check out Smith Rock. This is normally where it catch whitebait. When I got there, I saw nothing but a few ballyhoo. I did not want to make a day of whitebait hunting, so I decided just to head back to Centipede Bay and catch the ol standby, mud minnows. On the way across the Bayport channel I saw a few birds working and then saw the rain. When the whitebait are on the surface it looks like rain. I threw the net a couple of times and had plenty.
The report I got was the bait was small, just the right size for redfish. After the first cast, I could see they where all big, perfect for grouper bait. When I catch smaller baits I like to have about 100 or more, so I can live bait chum. Nothing gets the fish turned on like live chum.
My first stop was at the end of the bay, I call it the redfish super store. When I just need a quick fish for dinner, I'll stop by here. About 98% of the time there will be 3-5 redfish in the back. I usually fish 3 lines, the first in the back the other two on the front sides of this area. Funny thing about this area, this is the only place where I have had 3 redfish hit 3 line at the exact same time. Today only two lines went of with in 2 seconds of each other. Almost like the redfish were just sitting around looking at the bait, then something, triggers them to bite. I caught the fish at the top and lost the second. It's hard to fight two fish at the same time. I decided to hang out for another 10 minutes and caught two more. Then moved to a very rocky bay.
This is not really a rocky, it's one big rock, jagged, full of snags and very hard to fish. But the redfish, love it. Since I had one in the box for dinner, I decided to use up the rest of the bait and chum. I saw 3 fish at the entrance of this bay and a couple more swimming around. I tossed out the chum and the water came alive. I broke off 3 times and release 2 others.
Then it was time to head back to the office to wrap up the end of week market reports.

Good Luck
Zippyjr

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Tide : Top 3.3ft @ 1:54pm
Water Clarity : Very Clear
Moon Phase: 0% Full: New Moon
Temp: 83 F
Water Temp : 73 F
Wind: W 10mph
Results: 24 in Redfish 4 releases 1 jack
Bait: Whitebait aka fish candy aka Greenbacks.