By: Chasten Whitfield
I came home from college for a short break and the first morning we were home my friends from school and I went to the Skyway Bridge to a catch pilchards to begin our day of fishing. Some other friends said the bait was still consistent early in the morning. After arriving at the bridge, we looked around for a few minutes and the bait was swarming behind our boat and with a couple of easy throws with a cast net, we blacked out the live well and were ready to go. We took a short trip over to McGill Bay to see how the water conditions were. On our very first spot we threw out some chummers and immediately hooked up with several small size snook. My friend Boston caught and released his very first snook. He is a freshwater Texas boy, and has never been to Florida. After chumming some more, Boston hooked up with a nice inshore macro again, another fish he has not caught before. We moved around several different spots inside McGill Bay and then ventured into Terra Ceia Bay hauled a few more snook and a nice trout or two. Lunchtime was upon us and we decided to ride south to Bowles Creek to get Friday fish tacos from a gas station, a local favorite. The tacos are amazing by the way, so after we ate we took a ride around Sarasota Bay kind of looking at things, however, the water quality did not seem to be very good. Unfortunately, there were a lot of dead fish floating so we headed back north. We ended up calling it a day as most of the bait had died due to the red tide in the waters down south so we went back home to relax in the pool. This was a great stress break away from college for the first time and I was able to get out and catch a few fish. Remember to fish whenever you can get a chance!
