STEINHATCHEE
The Gray Cloud with a Silver Lining

February, my least favorite month.  Keep reading, it gets better.  February is the coldest month of the year.  Cold fronts march southward with regularity.  We, here, get the wind and rain with rough seas.  It is a bummer.  Contributing to the bummer factor, is the offshore closure of gag groupers, which in yester-years, used to sustain us charter captains financially, and recreational anglers mentally, by trolling for gags successfully, while migratory bait were down south.  Being able to troll for grouper on blue-bird days, was a legit targetable blast.  There would be a lot of trolling activity in the sixty-foot-plus depths, as long as the water temperature was fifty-eight or greater.  Most often, water temps were holding at 62 plus, outside thirty nautical miles.  That was when five grouper per-person-limit, was the regulation, and twenty-head plus, was the expectation per charter trip.  Those experiences have been regulated out.  Why?  The Feds determined we, charter boats and recreational anglers, were having too much fun.  That’s my best guess, anyway…
February is a tough month to fish, honestly, well, the the first part of it.  Then the magic happens, the silver lining.  Sheepshead start their spawning ritual nearshore towards the middle of the month on to the first of April.  Their concentration to produce a new generation, creates a constipation of boats hovering over their love location.
I’m grateful the legal limit of sheepshead has been reduced to eight per angler.  It makes good sense not to take fish while concentrated for spawn.  Doing so, robs the future for young anglers, of the experience, you’re experiencing.  Furthermore, release, obviously egg-laden females, to the future.  The girls are doing their job toward your future happy.

February is a great month to bring a mess of delicious sea bass back to the dock.  They are so easy to catch over any hard-bottom area.  Squid is the menu.  A chicken rig of squid strips  makes for multiple hook-ups.  It is a great time to take the kids fishing on calm days.  Let them collect the fish-sticks for dinner!
Actually, February isn’t that bad if you direct the boat well nearshore.

Inshore, trout and redfish fishing, as of this writing, have been excellent.  Live shrimp has been the best bait due to the lack of pinfish.  If the same weather and water temperatures aren’t drastic, that is, if water/air temps drop hard, the Steinhatchee River will harbor a mass of trout as historically.