Forget the hoopla you hear about red tide being everywhere.  It’s not, and redfish and snook chewed hard this week to prove it.  In addition, anglers fishing aboard the Flat Back II caught trout, flounder, ladyfish, jack crevalle, and silver trout.

We saw temperature extremes this week from a high water temp of 94.6 to a low Sunday morning of 82.5 degrees.  The gradually falling temperature associated with the rainfall and cloud cover invigorated the fish and encouraged them to eat topwater baits.

Perhaps this isn’t a normal week, summer, or for that matter, year, when it comes to fishing.  But in the Terra Ceia area snook and reds lit up the water and peeled line off the reels this week.  Starting with redfish…the vast majority of fish have been in the slot with good numbers of fish over the max size limit as well.  While the bulk of my reds have come on CAL Shad tail jigs, we’ve also caught them on S7MR21 MirrOlures, and MirrOlure Top Dogs.  We averaged 5 or 6 reds a trip with 10 fat redfish on Sunday.

Snook have been pounding our plugs and jigs.  The largest fish was a break-off.  As my trolling motor slowly eased me around the backside of a small mangrove island in Terra Ceia Bay, I saw this fish roll on its side and lay in the shallows no deeper than a foot.  The crystal clear water made sight fishing the linesider easy.  A short 30-foot cast of the lure landed right in the strike zone.  The fish immediately turned on the bait and ran with it.  This beast looked to measure better than 40-inches as she burned the line off my Calcutta.  After a 20-second run, the sharp gill plate severed my 30-pound fluorocarbon leader.  Inspecting the line, I noticed chafe a foot up the line.  It takes one giant mouth to put that much chafe on the leader. 

Attempts with a fly this week proved very successful.  Most of the time, we threw a 3-M SA Mastery Series Bonefish taper line on an 8-wt. rod with a 9-foot leader.  Gummi Minnows and Lefty’s Deceivers were my best producers, along with a Carl Hanson Glass Minnow.  Glass minnows appear to be the forage of choice and these flies mimic them well. 

I’ve been saying that trout numbers are way down, and until I see evidence otherwise, I’m sticking by it.  Saturday we had a hard late afternoon incoming tide.  Each surge of the tide pushed water in the bay and turned on the trout.  DOA Shrimp with a Woodie’s Worm Rattle did the trick.  We put 20 small trout in the boat in about an hour and a half.  The largest trout we caught this week was a mere 18-inch fish.  Good eating size, but not what we should be catching.  Trout grow fast and multiply quickly, and as long as the red tide stays away, we should be back in the trout business in no time.

Oddly enough, we caught a few silver trout this week while fishing north of the Skyway Bridge near Joe Bay.  Several holes in about 12-feet of water produced silvers to 16-inches.  There is no size or bag limit, but all were released.  Flounder were caught at nearly every hard bottom area we fished.  Love’s Lures Grub tail Jigs bumped on the bottom produced flatties to 18-inches this week.

Snook season reopens this week.  Thursday’s grand opening will see some crankin’ afternoon outgoing tides coming up on the new moon, just prime for snook action.  While most linesiders will be undersized, be sure to release these fish carefully and handle them minimally for their survival.  ‘Til then…I’ll catch ya later!

Capt. Ray Markham

(941) 723-2655