Capt. Bart Marx
Hello fellow anglers, March in SW Florida and the fishing has been good! With the closure on the red, snook, and trout from Tampa to Naples it has been helping the return of more of these species to catch. All three have been eating live shrimp and this should continue till sometime in April when the shrimp migrate out into the Gulf, when the white bait will return for the summer. The weather should start calming down. It seems like we have had back to back cold fronts with small craft warnings all winter! Don’t get me wrong I like the cool weather, but summer felt like it was ten months long this past year and hot. It will be back soon enough.
Looking out deeper into the Gulf, the lanes and mangroves should be hungry and feeding around natural bottom structure close to shore in the 30’-50’ foot range. The red grouper should be found in the 50’-80’ range, and yellow tails around structures in 80’+. For offshore fishing, I like to anchor up and chum a spot. I feel that you have a better chance of drawing fish to a feeding frenzy as to drifting and randomly hooking into some fish. When I anchor, I like to get up current of my mark and get the bite started and draw the fish to you. You may catch some smaller fish to start, but they purge as you reel them up to the surface and create an underwater chum slick. As you get things going good you can let the anchor line out till you are over your ledge or reef. This helps keep things going and get some of the other fish hanging around the edges. This is why I like to bring several different frozen baits to the party; you can figure out what they want to eat. And if at all possible bring some type of live bait, squirrel fish, pinfish, white bait, or shrimp if you have a live well. When you have used all the different frozen baits you brought and the bite starts to slow down, this is when you start dropping down live ones and the bite can continue awhile longer. This has worked well for me in the past; some folks like to drop chum balls down to the bottom and that works too. When available I bring some frozen chum along some I buy and some I make myself. So if you would like to come along with Capt. Bart Marx and learn some of these techniques or you would like me to come along on your boat and help with the learning curve give me a call or e-mail me at captbart@alphaomegacharters.com And always remember singing drags and tight lines make me smile. <*(((((>{