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Venice Inlet and the Gulf of Mexico
Capt. Dave Pinkham
September 18, 2000
Venice - Saltwater Fishing Report
Thanks to Hurricane Gorden the Gulf of Mexico sure got stirred up a bit this week.But honestly other than a few missed days of fishing, the Venice/Engleood area once again got spared from a direct hit. We did spend the better part of Sunday down at Dona Bay Marina in Nokomis adjusting dock ropes. Although the storm passed by 100 miles west of our area, the winds at times gusting up to 60 mph helped to push the high tide waters up over the top of the docks.
Anyway with Gorden now safely past our area, the Gulf should once again be fishable by midweek. This means we will be getting back to the normal weather patterns for this time of year. Thunderstorms will often build along the coastline in the afternoon. Some of these T-Storms can pack quite a punch or this case a bang. That's one reason I like to get an early start in the morning. Seems like when the sky is clear in the morning, there's time to get out and back to the dock before those afternoon clouds really start building. Just a word of caution though, do keep a constant eye on the weather this time of year when you're out on the water, or for that matter when you are any distance from shelter, as these storms can and do build quickly.
One thing I've noticed time and again, although this may not hold true all the time, is that when we get a good storm during the night with a lot of electricity flying around, come morning it's as if the atmosphere is drained of all the charge for a while. Regardless of what you may think of my so called theory, check it out next time we get an all night humdinger cracking overhead; come sunrise see if the coast is clear for an offshore run.
One thing I am sure of is that it stormed hard last Friday night and Saturday morning was clear as a bell. Not only was the sky blue, but the Gulf was flat as a pancake. My clients wanted keeper grouper and despite being determined to get them some, I couldn't pass up a quick throw on some shiners as we were heading toward the Venice Jetty's. Live shiners are kind of ace in the hole for me. If the grouper won't eat, the white bait is great for snappers and trigger fish on the bottom and mackerels on the surface.
I'd been hearing reports of some keeper grouper coming in fairly close to the coastline in the past couple weeks so we figured on doing some fishing in the 7 to 15 mile range. First stop was about 12 miles out and the red grouper bit hard and fast. We went darn near through 15 pounds of frozen sardines trying to put a few keepers in the box. A lot of the fish were red grouper in the 12" to 19" range. If handled carefully fish caught in short bottom seem to do well when released. We did manage several keepers along with some mangrove snappers. There was still plenty of Spanish mackerel hitting on the top too.
The next stop was several miles farther out on a little spot I found while trolling. It didn't mark much on the graph on this day, but I figured we might as well fish it. No sooner than we got the boat set down on the jug, and some bait on the bottom, the grouper started hitting. This time they were a bigger class of fish, and we quickly put some 22" inch plus red groupers in the box. They turned off just about as quickly as they started, which was OK with me since everyone seemed happy enough with the catch.
The past couple days right before Gorden came through the grouper must have felt the weather changing because they were really biting. I've seen this happen before, when a low pressure system such as a tropical storm approaches the fish bite like crazy. It's as if they know once the storm gets here they'll have to lay low for a few days.
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