COOLER WEATHER, STRATEGIC FISHING!

This week has been extremely windy and pretty chilly. This period of time during winter is an excellent opportunity to take care of boat maintenance, get reels serviced, organize tackle, and monitor the forecast. There are plenty of opportunities to catch fish, it just takes a little more patience and strategy to be successful. Prior to this most recent windy pattern, we were starting to catch a lot of trout on some of the shallow grass flats just north of Clearwater. Mainly using artificials, the majority of trout were undersized. Typically during this time of year, the larger female trout are found in St. Joseph Sound north of the Dunedin Causeway. However, prior to this recent cold front their numbers had still been fairly low. Hopefully this drop in temperature will push a few more migrating trout into the area to inhabit the rocky bottom and grass patches around the islands in the St. Joseph Sound area. Redfish are also a common target through the cooler winter months. Several have been occupying the residential docks and back water canals seeking warmer temperatures radiating from the sea walls and darker, muddy bottom. Live shrimp is a very productive Bait for pulling a few redfish out from under docs and around oyster bar‘s. However, cut ladyfish chunks have been working for the larger redfish. There are still a few mullet schools to focus on around the backside of the barrier islands such as Caladesi Island and Honeymoon Island. Bombing cut pieces into the schools especially just sand holes and pockets leading on and off of the flat are perfect areas to produce a few good redfish bites.