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Snow, Sleet, Slush and Sniffles?
How About Blue Sky, Sunshine
And a Whole Bunch of Redfish!
By Capt. Tony Petrella
Okay, ever since the college bowl games ended it’s either been “unseasonably warm" or another blizzard has blasted the Rockies, the Midwest, or New England.
Venice, Florida, on the other hand, will be sunny with temperatures near 80, and the redfish are crawling all over the flats from Tampa Bay to Charlotte Harbor eating everything they can catch.
Fish like the Charlotte Harbor redfish at bottom right, which certainly is pretty nice. But how about some like the huge black drum John Donohue is trying to drag into his kayak?
Now, doesn’t that look nicer than putting on another sweater so you can run down to the corner grocery for another box of Kleenex? Of course it does.
The fishing for redfish, spotted sea trout, pompano, bluefish, ladyfish, and jac crevalle during the daytime has been excellent. And fishing for snook under the lighted docks around Venice has been nothing short of phenomenal!
It’s common for us to catch 20 snook in a couple of hours after the sun goes down. But lately it’s been 30, 40, some nights even 50 snook and bluefish in the boat.
Like the one (middle right) that George Day caught in Snook Alley the first time he ever went “Night Snookin.” We’re sight-casting perhaps 40 feet to fish that are stacked up like cordwood. The lights on homeowners’ docks attract hundreds, even thousands of small glass minnows and shrimp. The snook know this, and congregate under the lights just waiting for the tide to serve up dinner.
During the daytime, we have sight-casting opportunities, too. Winter tides are the lowest of the year in southwest Florida. So, if you don’t mind missing a bit of beauty sleep, you can wade the flats in Charlotte Harbor or Lemon bay and cast to tailing redfish just after first light.
These reds move out of their night-time holding areas in the deeper water around oyster bars and potholes, and creep up onto the flats as the sun rises, looking for crabs and shrimp and minnows.
The trick is to ease out of the boat maybe a hundred yards away, then stealthily wade within casting distance. Drop a fly a couple feet ahead of a feeding redfish, let it sink to the bottom, and twitch it eversoslightly when he looks up.
WHAMMO!!!!!! Two feet (or more) of redfish bulldogging through the eelgrass is guaranteed to make even the most jaded angler yell “owwwwwie” when that screaming fly line starts wearing grooves in fingers trying to stop that first sizzzzzzzzling run!
Then all you can do at the end of the day is sit back and admire your catch, like Dean Ebert and Andy Carlton with their dandy redfish from Lemon Bay…
So, come on down. The livin’ is easy.
And Tight Loops Fly Fishing has a special Winter Getaway Package that gives you four nights of lodging, three full days of fishing, your license, continental breakfast and box lunch each day for just $1,200. Couple that with the lowest air fares ever—coming right into Sarasota--and you just ran out of excuses! |
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