Neue Redington Shores Angelberichte

With the overnight rain and morning fog, mist and wind, I wasn’t too sure that Jeff and his crew were going to enjoy a day on the water. But we got under way at 0900 and went to the SW of Indian Shores Reef to do some bottom fishing. Jeff and his crew had been Spanish mackerel fishing recently and wanted to do something different. We anchored up in 45 ft. over some limestone bottom and proceeded to haul in dozens of spot tails, yellowtail snapper, too-small red and gag grouper and a good-sized trigger fish (all went back in for another day) before the grunts made their way to our baits. But once they started, they came fast. Out of 30-40 that came over the rail, we put 14 in the box that were over 12” (our boat size limit). On the way in, we put out the spoons for Spanish, kings or bonita, but had no takers.

Aaron and “The Board of Directors” for his company went fishing with Jose and I this morning. We had steady action on the Spanish mackerel side but also hooked into a King that was a 1/2” too short. We also were able to get a nice baracuda on the line, but he had other ideas and broke off near the boat. Hope you can join us for some fishing soon!

Tony and his family joined Jose and I for a day of adventure. On a half-day trip, you can visit two maybe three spots that may hold fish. We hit four stops but the first one was the best one. Which just proves the old adage “never leave fish to find fish”, which we did. After landing about a dozen nice-sized spanish (18-20”), we got greedy and went looking for kings, bonita or perhaps baracuda. And found nothing-not even spanish! But we were happy with our catch and a good day was had by all.

Linnea and her friends wanted to go bottom fishing. And we had that in mind as we trolled a couple of spoons out through John's Pass and started catching a few Spanish mackerel. By the time we got to JP MoA, there was plenty of storm activity offshore, so we decided it would be best to troll down the beach and see if we could keep the Spanish thing going. And we did. After an hour or two, Linnea and her friends forgot all about bottom fishing. By radio, we heard from some of the other boats that were farther offshore and they were getting wet so we felt like we made the right decision. Plus, it's bad practice to leave fish to find fish. You don't know that you will find them!

We had a 1/2 day charter last week and came up with a nice run of Spanish mackerel in the first hour of fishing. After that, the bite went cold. We got a nice half-dozen with most fish aroun 18”. Not bad for mid-March. L

For some reason, this summer has been a Bonita summer. We have been blessed to run into lots of Bonita. Some have been on the Pinellas County artificial reefs. And some have been in the Egmont shipping channel. And others have been somewhere in between. Between March and Christmas, we really try to pick enough Spanish mackerel for our client's dinner. Spanish are fun to catch, easy to clean and taste great any way you choose to fix them. But Spanish tend to be small (less than 20") and many customers want to catch "big fish". Well, we don't have a lot of big fish just hanging around. You can get amberjack, red or gag grouper, red snapper and such, but you have to go way offshore to do it. We tend to get clients who book for 4 hours and they don't really want to spend all that time getting to deep waters for big fish. So, we target the Bonita! They are good-sized, fight like a fish twice their size and there have been lots of them this year. They just aren't that good for eating, unless properly prepared.