Hi all,
I switched around my schedule such that I was able to go out both sat and sunday this weekend to see about "catchin' sumthin' " As you will see in my last report, I spent saturday cruising for a large school of black drum, which I couldn't find, and then spent time IN the water pushing my boat off a sandbar, DOH!
Sunday was a new day......
I took a good friend who works at the hospital with me. We grabbed both light and medium rods, got some live shrimp at Gandy Bait and Tackle, and were on our way.
We cruised for several miles till we finally got to the Little Manatee River mouth. As we can all tell, this winter is colder and longer than usual......so our plan was this:
GET TO WARM WATER, and then fish there! I guess its not rocket surgery, but I digress.....
We motored about 2 to 2.5 miles up the river to a couple of choice spots that I like to try. There are about 8 or so "honey hole" spots that I fish at in the little manatee....and I can almost GUARANTEE that if I'm not catching fish in these spots....NO ONE is catching any fish in the river on that day!
Now, dont get me wrong, there are two different types of spots in the little manatee....summer spots and winter spots, if you will.
Summer is where there is a deep/steep dropoff from the mangrove edges, and good overhang (so the fish stay nice and cool in the heat), with plenty of current flow. the fish are as far up under the mangroves as possible.
Winter time spots are where its a shallow bank out from the mangroves and in the direct sunlight, that suddenly drops off to deeper water, with plenty of current flow. the fish are right along the edge, cruising, and getting up to the shallow bank to heat up, then back to the dropoff edge to feed.
In any event, the spots gave up nothing but sheepshead....not unexpected in the winter, but we were looking for reds and some snook.
The water temp in the river must have still been sixties, but we tried anyways.....
So, next best thing.........get to the power plant warm water discharge!
We ran a few miles north to the apollo beach / big bend power plant and started fishing the discharge stream.....NOW THAT IS WARM WATER....when i put my hand in the water it was like a heated pool temperature. First thing we came upon....a school of about 200-300 sting rays, with cobia maneuvering in between them. We threw our lines in, and I accidentally still picked up my light tackle rod (when I brought my heavier setup for exactly this spot!). Well, you guessed it...i hooked up first cast, and line SCREAMED out of the reel. 100 yards out within a few seconds, I am continuously tightening my drag, then 200 yards out now and my drag is maxed, 250yards and i am starting to put pressure on the spool, then snap! the reel was out of line...God I felt like an idiot. Would have been nice to get that cobia on the right tackle, eh?
At this spot we didnt get a second bite from the cobia, so we moved even closer, into the inlet.
We anchored right near a nice hole, and pulled out a ton of fish from there. Speckled trout, silver trout, redfish, crabs, ladyfish, and ALMOST another cobia. My friend hooked a small silver trout on shrimp (6 or 7 inches) and was reeling it in, only to see a good 40 inch cobia chasing the now-hooked trout, we both realized it too late, and the cobia sped away as it saw the boat, just before inhaling the trout, and possibly becoming the next in line on the hook!
The cruise back was so nice, the sun was setting, the wind was slow, the water was nice 1-2ft waves.
Hope you guys liked the report!
TEX
Tex