Fishing with Capt. George Tunison | Better get out on the water now if you want to catch sheepies
Capt. George Tunison
With hot weather and water right around the corner, sheepshead fishing will soon start to fade away. For now, get them while you can and enjoy some fine eating. Boca Grande dock structures have been and continue to be a hotter spot unless a red tide bloom pauses the fishing. Nearshore reefs and wrecks are a great fallback option and are often loaded up with sheepies.
For newbies, rigging for sheepshead can be as simple as loading a lite jighead with a small, as in small, chunk of shrimp and lowering it down right next to a piling, or try adding a hook to a leader and a split shot a foot above the hook, or try a set-up using an adjustable slip bobber for accurate depth control. Use small, thin wire, ultra-sharp hooks to get in between those dentures, although a big sheepie might crush your thin hook with its powerful human-like molars. Lighter line fools more smart fish.
When the winds permit a safe trip, mangrove snapper and grouper await you on your favorite offshore ledges and rock piles. Mangrove or grey snapper will eat just about anything you toss their way and love a well presented chum slick but are also very line shy. Use the lightest test you can get away with and typically the deeper you go out, the bigger they get. A 10-pounder puts up a great fight so tackle up accordingly.
On the way back in, poke around the pass edges with lite tackle and small, shrimp-tipped jigs hopped off the bottom to hopefully add some delicious pompano guests to your snapper cooler. Goofy jig setups in pink or yellow are a great choice. Just remember to keep making contact with the sand or bottom during the retrieve to make it more enticing for these delicious little fighters. Definitely one of my favorite eating Florida fish.
Trout are trout and still biting around the area. The cooler the weather the deeper you fish. Five to 6 feet on a chilly morning then move shallower as the sun warms the flats later in the day. With soft plastic paddletails, slow your retrieve in the deeper water while adding commercial scent products ups your score, although the traditional cork and live shrimp rig is always hard to beat. Best to experiment with your retrieve to find out where they are in the water column. Next to bottom? Mid-depth or near the top? Let the fish tell you, by offering different depth and speed retrieves.
Good numbers of smaller snook and reds are around on both sides of the harbor along with bonnethead sharks that like shrimp and surprise trout anglers with good runs on lite tackle.
Since I don’t have the boat or desire to take advantage of our good to excellent offshore angling here in Southwesst Florida, I stay shallow. Since this isn’t the best time of year to work the local flats and oyster bars, I gas up and head south usually to Key West to take advantage of the early spring outstanding fishing for a ton of different species both inshore and near-shore. Early tarpon action, flats and harbor permit, dolphin, the biggest kingfish in the USA, a huge variety of sharks and beautiful high jumping sailfish. Although many seasoned salts will groan when I say this but (the same snooty group that hold their noses at catching powerhouse, jack crevalle), I love big, shallow-water barracuda on light spin and fly tackle. Amazing drag-burning runs and huge leaps and jumps keeps me coming back for more of this “trash” “by-catch” species. Maybe the lowest cost charter in the Keys, I’m barracuda ready to go all the time. Don’t knock it till you try it. Guaranteed grins.
The Keys has gotten quite expensive but worth all the fishing memories you’ll make there in early springtime.
Capt. George Tunison is a Cape Coral resident fishing guide. You can contact him at 239-579-0461 or via email at captgeorget3@aol.com.