I have been reading the FS forums for years now and I have gotten some excellent information on what to do and what not to do. But I have always been a consumer and have never contributed, so I am going to start giving back…though I will probably be posting more of what not to do than what to do.
I fished Sarasota on Saturday, 12/01/12, with my dad, brother, and uncle. We bought 3 doz hand-picked shrimp and then spent the first 45 min of the morning netting white bait (they are still hanging around but they are small) and pinfish – we had to chum them up to get them though. Once we had enough bait we hit the beaches and there were lots of birds and schools of false albacore on the surface. We chased some of the larger schools and ended up working together with another boat corralling the fish because they were moving so much. We landed two, both on bone white X-raps. Both fish were in the 12-15 pound range. They were a lot of fun on light tackle.
From there we headed to a near shore reef in about 30’ of water to do some bottom fishing and drifting. We caught 2 keeper flounder, one on a pinfish and one on white bait, and we also picked up a nice sheepshead on a live shrimp. We also caught some grunts but the action was pretty slow. So we headed inshore to catch the last half of the incoming. We drifted a grass flat in the north bay and picked up a 17” trout on the first cast on a free-lined shrimp in about 2.5’ of water. We didn't catch squat after that, besides a big lady fish. The water was gin clear but the wind started blowing harder out of the east and was fighting the incoming tide. Without any bites for a while we moved south to another flat and the water was all muddy and we didn't catch squat. We hit one more spot on the way back and didn't catch anything. By this time the wind had picked up quite a bit so we called it a day.
Sorry for not having any pics…I’m going to try to get better about actually taking pics.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by sunflower
