Two White Stripes
It's June and the whitebait should be plentiful. Over the Memorial Day weekend I left my boat in the water (in case we wanted to run out we could avoid the boat ramp...) On Monday I went out to do little scouting around Dinner Point. I was only looking to lure fish, but as I loaded the boat there was a big school of whitebait swimming right next my boat.
Tuesday I went out looking for whitebait and found none. The water was dirty but calm, I checked the Hernando Beach Channel, Bayport tripod, marker 2, 4, the turn marker, the two post. Not a diving bird not a ripple on the water. Guess I should have caught them at home...
I settled for the stand by mud minnows, which are still plentiful around the islands and in the grassy areas. With a couple of dozen baits I headed back to Centipede Bay, where I fully expected to bag two redfish for dinner. The water quality was poor, I could see the bottom but the water was stained. The first stop, nothing. I even checked around when I decided to leave. There was no sign of a redfish deep in the grass or anywhere. The next stop was same as the first. Nothing... The third and fourth stop. zero.
At this point I decided to break out the lures and start covering a lot more ground. I covered most of the bay and only saw one redfish stuffed way back in the grass. All the other locations where I find redfish remained vacant. I did notice that last time we caught fish we also lost a lot of baits to snappers, this time we did not lose a single bait and fished twice as long. So needless to say, the dinner was not what I was expecting.
On Monday I checked out Dinner Point, this is an area where I don't see many boats ever. The water is shallow and drys ups at low tide. I came in from the west and headed east down the shoreline. What's nice about this area is the rocks are sand color, so you can see the fish from a long distance. The first fish, much to my surprise was a nice snook. I was really glad to see it, since the cold killed of so many snook over the past winter. I saw lots of mullet and a couple of redfish by the time I made it about half way back to Hernando Beach. While I don't normal fish here due to the low water, I may fish it next week if the water is still dirty.
Everyone will get skunked every now and then. It brings us back to realty in knowing that fishing is not the catching.
Good Luck
Tide : Raising
Water Clarity : Dirty
Moon Phase: 71% full
Temp: 91F
Water Temp : 81F
Wind: WNW 5mph
Bait: Chatter bait, Mud minnows
Results: 0 Redfish