By Capt. Rachel Cato
So long cold fronts and hello Spring! Winter will typically be gone by now and weather continues to warm and fishing only gets better by the day. Bait is the big story because with bait comes the predators. Spotted sea trout will be the real crowd pleaser and with so many thick slot fish flooding the flats and feeding on the bait, they become easy to come by. Current and 4-6 feet grass flats with sand edges are the prime target areas. If you’re only catching short and small fish keep moving down the edges until you find the bigger fish. These fish will separate by size and I’ll only keep the middle slot 17 to18-inch range because the yield of meat is higher than that of a 15 inch trout. The new regulations for spotted sea trout is no harvest of fish larger than 20 inches through May 10, 2019, so keep an eye on your fishing days this month. Spanish mackerel will be crashing the flats with trout so be ready to tie on a long shank hook if your hook keeps getting cut off. I’ll tend to start off small with a #1 long shank J or 1/0 will work but the larger the hook the more the metal is seen. If mackerel is what you are targeting, haywire twist about 2 inches of light wire on a J hook, then uni-knot tie on a leader. I came up with this technique because the bigger mackerel were biting through the leader and I kept finding my J hook with about an inch and half leader cut off in the stomachs when I was cleaning fish. Snook and reds will also continue to be all catch and release through May 10th to help recover from last years red tide. Snook are found in large schools and offer lots of fun, but do be sure to release quickly and allow for recovery. Reds will show up along the mangroves and will move through in small to large numbers.