02-10-2001, 11:09 PM
February 9, 2001<br><br>Sarasota Fla. Fishing Report<br><br>By Capt. Bob Smith<br><br>I had an afternoon trip on Thursday and the weather was perfect as I was cruising to the docks. The morning fishing reports coming over my VHF were not that good. There were no fish at all on the bay and only a few small fish well offshore. It had also been windy during the morning hours and the water was rough for the offshore boats. This has pretty much been the story for the last few weeks.<br><br>During the week, some of the sheepshead around the docks had started to take bait and there was even a short lived run of redfish. When leaving the dock that afternoon and like all the other guides, I was just interested in getting a bend in the rods and not the species. We all picked different destinations and stayed in contact via VHF. Some went north and south on the bay, some went offshore to the 60 foot depth. I opted for the inshore artificial reefs in 25 feet of water.<br><br>I anchored directly over a pile of undocumented cement rubble in what I call the Lost reefs. We had been fishing for about an hour without a good bite of any kind for us or anyone else. Then a report came in from the boat that was twelve miles offshore. Mangrove snapper averaging 3 pounds were on the bite. This sure sounded good but before we could make a move, a 12 pound spinning rod was bent double and the tip was pounding to go deeper as the angler held on with both hands. The drags are locked to keep the fish from getting back to the rocks and this makes the strikes very hard. The angler boated a nice 24" gag grouper. Immediately after that, a 4 pound sheepshead was boated and two big fish were lost. Then the action stopped. We did not want to move offshore for the snapper in hope of catching more grouper where we were. The action did start up again and we boated some 5 pound sheepshead but the grouper we hooked got back in the rocks and were lost. The anglers wanted the sheepshead and were happy to stay in this spot. The action started and stopped and would last only about 10 or 15 minutes. We also caught some small but keeper snapper and some short grouper.<br><br>Other boats that came out to fish this area also caught some nice fish. My four anglers caught enough fish for a nice cook-out before returning to the north. You need a lot of patience at this time but you can make the inshore fishing work. The offshore is still better at this time but the inshore fishing is picking up.<br><br>Enjoy and Protect<br><br>www.sarasota-fla-fishing.com <br><br><br>