Cold front will bring active fish

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 27, 2001

Cold air finally is arriving this weekend. For the angler, this should bring a welcome start to the anticipated fall fishing season.

Normally, by October water temperatures are lower and inshore and offshore fishing is excellent. Unusually warm weather has kept things from taking off. When the seas settle from Friday's cold front, anglers should discover more active fish -- although it may take a day or two for the inshore fish to adjust to the sudden drop in temperature.

Speckled trout have started to move into shallow water, where they will spend the winter. We caught our limit of good sized specks Thursday. Most were in less than 4 feet of water, and the larger ones were in 2 1/2 feet. All were caught on live scaled sardines fished under a float.

Speckled trout will fall for artificial baits such as soft-bodied jigs and minnows imitating plugs. Be sure to use a landing net when boating the bigger fish. The hook will pull more times than not if you try to lift the trout in with the line.

Redfish action has been decent at high tide. There have been impressive schools working the shoreline oyster bars and sawgrass edges when the water comes up high enough. Unfortunately, with the strong northerly winds the next few days, the water will not rise enough to bring the fish up.

Try looking outside your favorite redfish spot at low tide. The reds are there but often scattered. If you get lucky and find a deeper hole where they're concentrated, you can catch a bunch.

Earlier this week, we found a school of big redfish and caught several on live sardines. After we landed a few, they stopped biting even though we could see them behind the boat.

We switched from sardines to small pinfish and started catching them again. When we ran out of small pinfish, we used larger ones that were cut in half. I wouldn't have recommended cut bait before, but it works.

Flounder have started to become a more common catch. We landed a few each day last week. The biggest was a 6 1/2-pounder Pam Hardwick caught while grouper fishing off Anclote Key. It was the largest flounder I've seen in some time.

Grouper fishing is improving.

Good catches are being made in water as shallow as 12 feet. Keep in mind that the size limit is 22 inches. As always is the case, there seems to be a lot of grouper an inch short. Law enforcement has been checking many boats for undersized fish.

If it's fast action you're wanting, try heading off the beaches of Anclote or Three Rooker Island a mile or two. There are schools of frenzied mackerel and bonito for miles.

Just look for the flocks of birds and surface commotion as the fish gorge on small sardines. Drive to the schools and cast as they're active. Then when they go deep, move over to the next one.

Live bait works but so does anything else that's shiny. Small jigs and spoons make it easy to move from school to school without replacing bait. Keep an eye on skyrocketing kingfish in these areas. They often hang around the activity and eat small Spanish mackerel and ladyfish.

To catch kings, slow troll a live mackerel with a wire stinger rig. You want a smoker fish to find your mackerel swimming around outside the school by itself. This looks like an easy meal, and it seldom is turned down.

-- Ed Walker, (727) 944-3474, charters out of Palm Harbor.

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