Hernando Beach Inshore Fishing Inshore flats fishing Redfish, Snook, Trout, Snapper and Grouper

Snook Attack

Today a friend was visiting and wanted to go catch a few redfish. We headed out of Jenkins creek so we could pick up some whitebait on the way. We checked the area around the first turn maker and did not see any so we headed to tri-pod, nothing but big ballyhoo and pin fish. Checked smith rock, nothing. Went back to the turn marker and finally found 3 pods of bait. Over the last few weeks the turn marker is the only place I have found bait.

Once we loaded up with bait, we headed back to Centipede Bay. We spend too much time hunting bait and now the tide had turned. We only had about an hour to fish in the bay and hooked up with two redfish and lost them both! (That's called and auto release...)

The next up was the Hernando Beach Channel in the "cuts". The cuts are the deep reliefs between the rock piles that protect the channel from filling in with sand. I see many anglers there most seem to understand how to fish this area,. Today there was a couple of guys fishing and they anchored up in the middle of the cuts. This is where we catch fish, as you can image they left with out catching anything.

There is about 20 "cuts" along the north side of the channel

The place to anchor is about here and fish between the rocks

We moved from cut to cut tossing out live chum at each stop. One cut down from where the other guys where fishing, there was a big response from the chum. We could not tell what they where, but I suspected that they must have green backs that blended in well with the sea grass on the bottom. The one fish that size with a greenish back is a snook. We pitched a couple of baits with hooks and both of us hooked in to big snook.

The first pair broke off since I had trouble releasing the anchor and fighting the fish to give chase. The next one, I was ready and released the anchor and off we went. I use a trolling motor to chase the fish so it will not spook the other fish. We came back to the anchor thinking that we must have spooked the fish. Only to find another big response to the live chum. This went on for about an hour, then everything stopped. We ended up releasing 5 snook all the 10-12# range. The one draw back to this kind of actions is no one wants to stop and get the camera out to take pictures... Maybe one day I'll get a helmet cam...

The next cut we caught a couple of trout for dinner and decided it was time to call it a good day.

Good Luck
Zippyjr

----------------------------------------------------
Tide : Falling : H 3.0 10:01 am : L 0.40 6:21pm
Water Clarity : Clear
Moon Phase: 78% full waxing gibbous
Temp: 78F
Water Temp : 85F
Wind: 5mph SE morning- 10mph W afternoon.
Bait: Whitebait (green backs, greenies)
Results: 5 Snook release - 2 Red Fish (auto release) - 2 trout