    
Capt. Mike Winn
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 | | Posted on Wednesday, August 28, 2002 - 6:04 pm: | |
Subject: Big Bend Report
BIG BEND
Well this is it. The long weekend devoted to the working folks, your reward for busting your butt all year. Although it has been very hot out there, you should be all right as long as you have a place to hide from the sun and bring plenty of water and Gatorade or other sports drink. Start drinking fluids in the morning and don’t stop. If you wait until you feel light-headed, it may be too late. This weekend’s tides won’t match the spring tides we saw last weekend, but hopefully we’ll see enough current for a repeat of last weekend’s great redfishing. Look for an east to southeast wind and seas two feet through Monday.
Inshore anglers from Suwannee to Homosassa are finding oversize redfish plentiful and hungry with legal size fish in slightly fewer numbers. Gold spoons and small pinfish floated on grassy points and shell bars around high tide are a top choice. Live shrimp, grub-tail jigs, and top-water plugs are also a good bet.
Water temperatures inshore are pushing 87-degrees, but despite this, some very impressive trout catches are coming to anglers working grass flats in as little as four feet of water. Fifteen to twenty fish limits are not uncommon. Live bait and artificials have been very effective. The Weekend Angler host Kevin Ray and friend boated 10 trout over 19 inches on top water plugs while drifting Cedar Key flats. The pair was using a fire tiger plug called a DJ Vamp produced by the Lureman, Capt. Dave Jefford. If you are not lucky enough to have any of Capt. Jefford’s plugs, try a floater/diver or something you can walk across the surface. Zara Spook, Mirrolure’s Top Dog, or a Yozuri Crystal Minnow should do the trick. Live shrimp and pinfish are taking plenty of fish also.
If you're looking for something bigger to stretch your line, sharks and cobia are still being hooked in inshore cuts and channels from Suwannee to Cedar Key. Get out there early if you are after cobia. Heavy boat traffic puts a stop to sight fishing in a hurry.
Spanish mackerel, bluefish, and ladyfish are still chasing jigs, spoons, and flies at Seahorse Reef, Spotty bottom, and Hedemon Reef. An abundance of grass and jellyfish has made for difficult trolling. Casting jigs and flies to bait pods has proven more successful. Large schools of 10 to 15 inch mangrove snapper are cooperating for anglers chumming and free-lining small pinfish, pilchards or chunks of fresh cut bait. A few feet of fluorocarbon leader may be necessary to get these tackle-wary slabs to bite.
The grouper bite is fair, but in most cases you will need a lot of bait to put legal fish in the box. There are tons of just short red and gag grouper, so take care when de-hooking and releasing short fish. Short gags and triggerfish can wreak havoc on a well stocked live well or frozen bait. Make sure you bring some frozen herring and squid for variety. Fresh cut bait can sometimes prove more effective than anything else. Half of a blue runner or fillet grunt work well and are harder for the smaller fish to steal. Dead bait drew just as many hits as live, but the live bait is accounting for more legal fish.
Good fishing, see you next week!
|
