Outdoors

Daily fishing report

By MIKE WHITMAN
Published October 17, 2005

The weather the next few days should be ideal for an offshore trip, with winds of 10 knots or less and seas forecast to be less than 2 feet until late Tuesday night. The water nearshore and around the Sunshine Skyway bridge has cleaned up tremendously, with bait pods starting to show around some of the markers lining the ships channel.

By Friday you could see the effect a small drop in water temperature has had on bottom fishing. Our anglers limited out on gag grouper and mangos. The fish ate a combination of frozen sardines and squid. We found the fish in 62 feet of water southwest of Pass-a-Grille working breaks 2 feet or less.

There have been scattered reports of kingfish up and down the beach. So far we have not fished for kings, instead waiting for more bait to show closer to shore. That should happen soon with the cleaner water we are finding inside 20 miles.

There is another storm well to the south predicted to become Tropical Storm Wilma, and we are on the outer fringes. With any luck it will pass well west of our beaches and give our nearshore fishery time to further recover from Red Tide.

--Mike Whitman charters the Mega-Bite out of Gulfport. Call 727 384-5729 or view the Web site at www.megabitecharters.com

[Last modified October 17, 2005, 01:19:13]