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In The Walking Winter Wonderland

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By FRANK SARGEANT

Tribune correspondent

Published: November 2, 2008

There may be more comfortable ways to fish, but there are hardly any more productive tactics than wadefishing when Tampa Bay turns cold.

The fronts that blow through - frequently on the new and full moons, it seems - result in extremely low tides the day after, as the frontal winds back around to the northeast and blow at 20 knots and more. The effect of all this wind, combined with the lunar tidal cycles, is to create the lowest tides of the year along the east shore of Tampa Bay, as well as in many other areas along Florida's west coast.

Fish that regularly prowl the flats when the water is warmer and deeper are forced into the few remaining sloughs, cuts and holes, as well as into residential canals. For anglers who find the concentrations, it's truly like fishing in a barrel.

Sheepshead, flounder, spotted trout, redfish and snook are all part of the likely bag, though the cold-sensitive snook are more common well up the coastal rivers and in the deepest canals at this time of year. Sheepshead are among the favorite winter targets, because of liberal bag limits and their abundance; find a shell-lined hole or rocky cut and you might locate dozens of the striped panfish, all eager to gulp down a piece of fresh shrimp.

Captain Mark Thomas is an expert at this game, using an airboat to motor his clients across flats almost too shallow for a crab to cross. When they find a remnant deep spot, Thomas said, it's almost a sure thing the fish will be there.

"The lower the water goes, the more the fish are concentrated," he said..

For that reason, he likes to fish the last couple of hours of the falling tide and the first hour of incoming at a given location.

His favored tactic is to use a bare half-ounce jig head, on which he impales a chunk of fresh shrimp a couple inches long.

"This works better than using a sinker and a separate hook," Thomas said. "As soon as the fish touches the jig, you feel the bite and can set the hook. That's a big plus with sheepshead because they can be very hard to hook."

Captain Chet Jennings of Ruskin also likes the airboat routine in winter, sometimes offering his clients a "blast and cast" trip, with duck hunting along the South Shore at dawn, wadefishing later in the morning.

"I find run-outs through the outside bar, and we fish those areas as the last of the tide flows through," Jennings said. "There are usually both redfish and big trout in those areas, as well as sheepshead."

Jennings said it's not uncommon to also see redfish tailing on the bottom half of the tide, or anywhere there's grass and depths of around 12 to 15 inches.

Captain Geoff Page of Venice also guides winter wadefishing trips, often in the Terra Ceia area.

"When you wade, you can feel those little troughs with your feet," Page said. "Sometimes it might only be 10 or 12 inches deeper than the rest of the water, but that's where the fish are likely to be."

Page said he thinks one attractant for some backwater areas is the black mud bottom, which warms up quickly when the sun hits it.

All the skippers note that some of the best holes are frequently well inside the mangroves. Some speculate that the fish move inside looking for areas where they can escape bottle-nosed dolphin, which make a winter living by feeding on cold-slowed gamefish.

Most guides who specialize in winter wading provide chest waders for their clients. Those who want to try it on their own will want neoprene waders, which insulate against the cold better than rubberized nylon or Gore-Tex waders.

For more information, contact captain Mark Thomas at (813) 318-1698, captain Chet Jennings at (813) 477-1513 or captain Geoff Page at (941) 586-3756.

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