Florida Angler Television - Joe's Fishing Tips

Our first casts produce little more than brief moments of excitement as each of our floats is briefly pulled under only to pop right back up; a sure sign of pinfish worrying our baits. This is confirmed as soon as we bring in our lines and find that our shrimp are all missing their legs. Our captain tells us not to worry, explaining that they faced the same situation the previous day and found that the big trout would come in and take the shrimp away from the pinfish as soon as it moved into their strike zone. Moments later his words prove out. We’re watching our floats dance to the pinfish tune when one after the other they’re pulled under to stay. I pick up my slack and lean back on the rod; not too hard because seatrout have a soft mouth and it's fairly easyto rip the hook out. My fish is all over the place and for a few minutes all I can do is hang on and hope that it doesn’t find some underwater obstruction on which to cut the line. It swirls on the surface a couple of times but I still haven’t been able to get a good look. All I know at this point from the way it’s taking drag is that this baby has wide shoulders. Then suddenly, 10 or 12 yards out a great yellow-mouth head comes shaking out of the water and we all look at each other in wonderment. Moments later, after a couple of scares when the fish got much too close to the anchor line, I was able to swing it towards our captain and the net and he promptly scooped up what turned out to be a gorgeous 25 inch spotted seatrout. After measuring this obviously egg-bearing female, we quickly released her.

As is the case at this time of year, we were soon out of the larger shrimp. The solution to this was to hook 2 and sometimes even 3 of the small ones at a time. The big trout took the multiple offering just as readily as they had taken the single bigger shrimp. Over the next couple of hours we boated several more hefty trout all over 18 inches. Keepers must be no less than 15" nor more than 20" (statewide) except one fish over 20" per person. In the North West region of Florida you may keep five fish per day. The season is closed during February.

So there you have it. The trout were hot and this year’s crop looks better than ever.