You just never know what you'll find when fishing

Unlike an amusement park ride, the real world does not give you a controlled experience for your admission. Go fishing in South Shore waters and you could be pleasantly surprised at what bites your line.

Recent cold fronts have lowered water temperatures, and anglers on the Alafia and Little Manatee rivers are fishing upriver toward Interstate 75 because they expect redfish and snook to be there. They are.

Nice fish are being caught. The old Cemetery Hole along the Little Manatee has some big redfish lately, and flats along the shore of Tampa Bay are teaming with schools of large trout. Some of those trout are trophy-size.

Now that trout season is open all the time, you can keep four of these beauties each day, one above 20 inches in length. It's what you can expect this time of year.

Then there's always that surprise.

I just attended a South Shore Anglers Club meeting at Little Harbor. Surprise. It was not about fishing. The guest speaker was Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jack Hoffman, who showed and described bomb removal in Afghanistan. It was a memorable presentation worth attending. Glad I did not sit home.

Recent fishing trips have been like that. One day I noticed a guy catching ladyfish and small jacks on the surface. Walked over and talked with the guy a bit, and then tried something. Allowing a jig to sink put me into some nice redfish that were not hitting on the surface. He never knew about the action below until I tried something different.

A couple of days ago another strange fishing event reminded me that you just never know. I was sitting near a dock along the Little Manatee watching another fellow free-line shrimp and catch small trout. I just had to get into that action. I put on a split shot to weigh down my shrimp a bit and caught a few small trout.

OK. That was fun. But then something heavy got on the line. It started with little fight, so I thought it was a snag. What a snag! A big stone crab with two giant claws perfect for the pot got tangled up in my bottom line and was just begging to come home for dinner.

Remember, you cannot keep the crab. You can keep the claws, if they are large enough.

When I got done there were multiple claws in my cooler and crabs released to grow more claws for the future.

Get out there and do some fishing. You just never know.

Catch 'em up.