It was great to be back to back on the water and wearing shorts! Saturday while not sunny was very mild with the morning low a balmy 60 degrees. This morning’s trip was the first since installing custom clear vinyl windows on the T tower. How nice it was zipping along out of the wind, it was also amazing how quiet the ride is. A quick 10 minute run had us in a deep canal on the eastern side of Ft. Desoto. This is one of my favorite winter spots as the water is always warmer due to the dark muddy bottom that holds heat, the eastern exposure and it’s a natural highway for fish leaving the flats at low tide. Inshore and flats fishing Tampa Bay is a whole new world with winter time negative low tides.
The best was to describe the bite was sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. The first hour came and went without a bite. Four stops with zero fish was not encouraging. Finally we had a sheepshead take a piece of shrimp and get the skunk off the boat. The bite was not good but we did find some action, all were sheepshead. Areas where sheepshead always congregate were totally void of fish.
Next stop was a grass flats which prior to the cold spell was red hot for good size trout. Several casts with DOA Glo shrimp resulted in a solid 20+” spotted seat trout. Know we have them, well it turns out we had several more hits but nothing else to show for our efforts. It was time to call it a day.
The good news had to be that we saw very little evidence of fish kill from the recent freezing weather. The water was already back to 56.6 degrees and with a mild forecast the next week things should improve rapidly.
