Backcountry and Beach 1/05 to 1/10

Thus far winter has been mild down here with fronts spaced further apart than normal. Last week a strong cold front finally blew through which dropped the water temps into the lower 60s. I grabbed the Hobie Pro Angler after the passage of the front and hit manatee-infested backcountry basins in the morning in search of snook. Most people do their snook fishing in spring and summer but the best action I've seen have come on the coldest days of the year, and today was no exception.

I left the snook biting and moved to another location in the afternoon where I found a bunch of tarpon rolling around in about 25ft of water. After a little coaxing, I started hooking a few on jigs bumped along the bottom.

The next couple days we fished for redfish and trout on the flats during the morning low tides. They came up on the flats in droves and were eating Sebile lures unlike anything I've seen.

Two days later we had a good weather window to put some baits out for the toothy variety. We arrived at the beach at 5pm and were in high hopes as several shark and "dolphin" sightings were reported by some northerners walking the beach. We ran 4 rods out as the sun settled over the horizon.

The first bait sat for maybe 30 minutes before getting picked up. How lucky we are to be fishing for sharks in January in shorts!

The fish felt heavy and gave some vicious headshakes. We knew what species we had but were in the dark on length. After 20 minutes we beach a very healthy 7'1" female sandbar.

After the release it was nonstop action for the next 4 hours. Joel was up next with the TLD25 on a 125 yard drop.

About halfway through the fight John's 12/0 went off and a few minutes later my 12/0 went off. I missed the hookset but John stuck his good and we were now doubled up. Ten minutes later we had both sandbars on the sand, 7'3" and 6'10".

We kept running baits out and they kept getting picked up within 5 minutes of the drop. John hooked up again and beached a smaller sandbar. I followed up with a 6'6".

It was getting close to 10pm now and I was starving so I took a 5 minute break to have a drink and eat some dinner. Of course the rods were still going off. Joel hooked up first and was getting worked for a while. Then John hooked up. Then things got out of hand...I hooked up as well. After a little coordination and careful maneuvering we were able to beach all 3 sandbars at the same time and use the timer feature to take a pic. A 4th sandbar actually followed the others all the way to the beach but took off when it got a glimpse of us.

We called it a night after that for a total of 8 sandbars landed in a matter of 5 hours. I don't know how many were out there but the school had to have at least 50, probably more. The weather is going to be tough for the next few days but we'll give it another shot soon and maybe get a trophy fish in the mid to upper 7' range.