Fish Tales
Cold front season is under way
By CAPT. TYSON WALLERSTEIN
Article published on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2006  |
Last week’s cold front will be the first of many that anglers will have to deal with this fall. Although our temperatures remain hot, those cold fronts really can have an effect on the fishing.
As the front passes through, the barometric pressure drops and the fish feel the change through their lateral line. In turn the fish will hunker down and “stick their noses on the bottom,” refusing to feed until the pressure begins to rise again.
The flipside to this scenario is that fish will often feed more aggressively than normal just before the front approaches the area and again a couple of days after.
Redfish still shine as the inshore angler’s best bet. Docks, flats and jetties are great places to look for reds. Jetties will hold big numbers of larger reds as they group up for an offshore move to spawn.
These fish will take pinfish, chunks of blue crab and shrimp soaked on the bottom all along the rock jetties at our major passes. Flats reds are a bit more difficult to locate. They can school in groups of 20 to 200 or more fish. So pay attention to all the little things to detect the presence of the school before you drift over them and they spook.
“Nervous” water is easily noticed by an area of water appearing to move in the wrong direction, or rise up higher than the surrounding water. The difficult part can be distinguishing the difference between the mullet schools and the redfish schools.
The mullet often move around aimlessly with no real direction. The reds will move from point A to point B and stop, usually pushing a lot more water. Anglers dock fishing for reds will find it is pretty much a matter of trial and error to find which docks hold reds. As a general rule, fish around docks positioned out toward the current of the main channel. These docks are generally deeper and hold more bait.
Shrimp and small pinfish fished on the bottom with a quarter ounce lead will do the trick.
Snook will be found around some of the docks that will produce redfish, as well as big oyster bars at high tide. If the finger mullet are on the bar, chances are there are a few snook around.
Until next week – GET BENT!
Tyson Wallerstein can be reached at capt.tyson@hotmail.com. If you have a fish picture you would like to see published in the newspaper, send it with your name and where it was caught, to: “Fish Tales,” Tampa Bay Newspapers, 9911 Seminole Blvd., Seminole, FL 33772, or e-mail it to editorial@TBNweekly.com.
|
Article published on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2006
Copyright © Tampa Bay Newspapers: All rights reserved. |
