The cold temperatures of last weekend persisted into this week, but Alene Haug, her daughter, Emma, and family member, John, were brave enough to fish Estero Bay with me on a very cold, windy late morning trip on Tuesday. We used live shrimp to catch and release one Snook and two Redfish, along with a couple dozen Sheepshead. We caught a few keeper -sized Mangrove Snapper also.
My remaining scheduled trips for this week have rescheduled for hopefully warmer days. That being said, we are still lucky here in southwest Florida, compared with the weather reports from everywhere else in the country right now. Unfortunately the cold extremes caused a hefty fish-kill, which has now prompted stricter regulations in order to protect our local fisheries.
After cancelling a week's worth of fishing trips during the windy, cold weather we have had, I finally made it offshore Wednesday morning, 1/13/10, with John & Karla Bolan, John's daughter, Alanna, and Caleb and Greg Robertson. It wasn't at all warm when we headed out but, compared with the deep freeze of the previous days, it almost seemed warm! We headed out nineteen miles from New Pass to fish with live shrimp in 43 feet, and had a productive morning. We caught eleven nice Mangrove Snapper to 17 inches, a 13-inch keeper lane snapper and a mess of grunts. The big prize went to Caleb, who caught a 22-inch keeper Gag Grouper (Caleb gave this prize to Karla to hold for the picture shown.). We released lots of smaller Grouper and Snapper.
Weather went downhill once again and I canceled a few more trips for the rest of that week. This week is super-busy on the books but we’ll have to see how many trips weather will allow.
Miami area Black Drum and Redfish at Flamingo and Tailing Bones and Muttons in Biscayne Bay December 2009
by: Capt. Jim Hale
I really don’t like fishing in winds that are blowing 30 mph and it is raining sideways but there is no complaining for me when there are large schools of Bonefish tailing everywhere. We went to 3 flats and no further because the last one was full of fish, there must have been over 200 bones in different size schools in South Biscayne Bay. But in 5 hours we only managed to boat one in the mayhem because it was so had trying to get shrimp to them, it was difficult at best with the darn wind blowing so hard.
This morning we ran out in 20 kt winds in a sloppy Biscayne Bay to a great tide and find falling water temperatures which is a key to Mutton Snapper fishing, I found some nice Pilchards but not a lot with cloudy skies which makes it hard to see and we didn’t get as much as I would have liked. The fishing was not bad with 6 Muttons but the largest was only 5 pounds. But that should change in the finger channels and especially the patch reefs with the temperature of the water dropping this week.
At Flamingo in Florida Bay we hooked up on two Snook that were monsters on Thursday and unfortunately breaking both off, shortly after the bite slowed so we moved west and found a fairly good bite of small Redfish and Black Drum up to 6 or 7 pounds on jigs tipped with shrimp in some of the creek mouths and runoffs.
This week should be interesting and shake up the fishing a bunch with cold temperatures in the mornings and a nice warming trend through the week. The large Tarpon that have been in the Bays to the north should be back again this week but with a lot more fish this time, they will be laid up and floating on the surface on calm warm days in between fronts ready to eat a fly. Look for free jumping Poons and that will be a good area to start looking! Snook and Reds should come up on the flats to warm themselves and eat on low water when the sun is high.
In Biscayne Bay Muttons will be the story again in the finger channels and especially on the patch reefs with a mixed bag of different Snappers and some Mackerel and which is great…. I love fishing for them on light tackle! And Bonefish will be cruising the ocean side flats on low water looking for crabs and shrimp….I expect to see a lot of bones this next week.
