Captain's Corner
By Doug Hemmer
Published November 14, 2007
Past trips: Fishing the past few days has been difficult. The winds were out of the northeast. The morning tides were on the negative side and the winds made the incoming tide extremely slow. Most areas that normally hold redfish had exposed land. We fished the drop-off, which made sight-fishing difficult because the reds were deep enough to not be seen. The trick was to live chum and hope a redfish would make a boil or strike one of the chum baits. Then we could cast to the fish. If we didn't see signs of redfish, we moved and started chumming again. This is slow, but it produced a few large redfish. The best action was trout, which were striking our float and jig combos. Areas with a mixture of grass and sand in 3 to 4 feet of water produced trout of mostly 12 to 18 inches, with a few 20 inches.
Tips: When fishing extremely low tides, get out of the boat and wade to the potholes inside the edge of the flats. Game fish sometimes stop in the holes.
Doug Hemmer charters out of St. Petersburg and can be reached at (727) 347-1389.