ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - By Tyler Wallerstein's description, night fishing the docks of the St. Petersburg backwaters was like fishing for crappie at my Uncle Demp's houseboat in Brodie Lake.
There were, of course, some notable differences. Demp's houseboat was a homemade, floating shanty permanently docked at the foot of a muddy fishing village near Terry Lock and Dam. The homes along the canals at the mouth of Boca Ciega Bay glittered like newly minted money, and the yachts moored at their docks gleamed like the smiles of their millionaire owners.
Oh, and the fish we were chasing were bigger than those Arkansas River crappie.
A lot bigger.
We were after snook, redfish, speckled sea trout and, if we were lucky, tarpon. If it worked as expected, this outing would climax a two-day fishing marathon that encompassed almost every style of inshore fishing that Florida's Gulf Coast has to offer.
My companions were Jay Harrod of Little Rock, senior media relations manager for The Nature Conservancy; Rafael "Rafa" Calderon of Corpus Christi, Texas, Gulf of Mexico Initiative director for The Nature Conservancy, and Ron Strait, outdoor editor for the San Antonio Express-News. Our primary reason for this tour was to learn about the role of sea grass in the Gulf of Mexico's ecosystem and its importance to the region's marine life, especially its valuable sport fishery. The Nature Conservancy is working to conserve sea grasses throughout the Gulf Coast and to revitalize aquaticmeadows in areas stressed by industrial, recreational and residential development.
As in Arkansas waters, fishing is best in the Gulf areas where grass is healthy and abundant, except on a much larger scale. And what better way to appreciate aquatic meadows than to sample it firsthand?
We began Tuesday morning when Calderon and I fished the flats along Honeymoon Island and Caladesi Island with Capt. Jim Huddleston. Riding an ebbing tide, Huddleston stopped on a flat and netted a huge mess of sardines to use as bait to catch a wide array of game fish, including speckled trout, Spanish mackerel, snook and redfish. For this kind of fishing, Huddleston uses G. Loomis Greenwater rods, Quantum Boca spinning reels and 10-pound test braided line. He said the Quantum reels are "bulletproof," and their ceramic drags can take all the abuse a bigredfish or snook can dish out.
"The tide is running out, so just cast in front of the boat and let the tide keep your line tight," Huddleston instructed. "You can pull up on your rod, and as soon as you let it back down, the tide will take out the slack. When you feel a strike, reel as fast as you can. The fish will hook itself."
With that advice we caught a mixed bag of specks, macks and ladyfish. The mackerel were beautiful, a coppery silver color with blue diamonds.
Fishermen in this part of Florida are obsessed with snook, a sleek, muscular fish with a violent attitude and the strength and speed of a racehorse. No matter how many fish you catch, a guide apologizes profusely if you don't catch a snook.
After lunch, Harrod, Calderon, Strait and I went wade fishing at the Blackthorn Memorial Rest Stop, just off Interstate 275 at the mouth of Tampa Bay. Like most of the bay, this area is shallow and flat, with vast grassbeds on the bottom dotted by small mangrove islands, or keys. You can wade almost to the navigation channels, but you have to shuffle your feetto avoid stepping on stingrays. The fishing was uneventful until sunset, when Calderon finally found trout congregated in a small dip. He caught four with Berkley Gulp plastic shrimp.
At 5 a.m. Wednesday, Strait and I drove to Redington Beach to fish the surf with Ray Cioffi, lure designer for MirrOlure, and Mike Tennian, sales manager for MirrOlure. We used two suspending twitchbaits, the Mirrodine and the Mirrominnow. They sink slowly, which is ideal for fishing surf and grass, and they performed marvelously.
A big rock pile on the beach draws snook and redfish at high tide, but the tide was very low when we arrived, and the rocks were dry. A stiff wind from the gulf pounded the beach with high, crashing waves. Nevertheless, baitfish were thick in thechurning surf, and I caught three nice jack crevalle on my first three casts. The biggest slammed the lure on the surface as soon as it landed. We also caught ladyfish and sticklebacks. The action was fast for about 90 minutes until the bait moved down the beach. The seabirds followed the bait, andwhen that happens, the fishing is done.
At about 9 a.m., we retired back to the Best Western at Dunedin to rest up for the grand finale, a night fishing trip in the residential canals of south St. Petersburg.
Strait and I met Wallerstein at a public ramp at the tip of St. Petersburg Beach. Wallerstein told us we'd fish live shrimp on spinning rigs on lighted docks. Many docks have lights that shine directly on the water. The lights draw baitfish, which draw big fish, mostly trout, snook and redfish, as well as an occasional immature tarpon. Our baits were live shrimp and threadfins, a fish that's considerably bigger than the threadfin shad that inhabit Arkansas waters. Wallerstein told me to cast to the edges of the light. Casting into the light will spook the fish and possibly ruin the hole for the rest of the night.
"When you feel a bite, reel down to the fish until you feel his weight on the line, then let him have it," Wallerstein said. "Reel like crazy, too, because a big redfish or snook will go right for the pilings and break you off before you know it."
The first dock held a lot of trout, but they ignored the shrimp. We went to another dock and saw three huge snook whirling under the lights. Wallerstein let the wind blow his boat toward the dock, and then he quietly lowered a big anchor. It caught the bottom and stopped us in a spot that gave me clear casting lanes to either side of the dock. Those fish weren't interested in shrimp, either. Wallerstein replaced it with a big threadfin, about the size of a medium-size bluegill.
About then, the homeowner and two of his buddies came down to the dock to check us out. I cast the threadfin softly behind the dock, and then reeled it to the edge of the light. When the threadfin dashed to the bottom, a big snook whirled and rocketed after it. As soon as it disappeared, a violent strike jolted my wrist.
"Gotcha!" I grunted as I set the hook. It was as if somebody dropped a bomb in the hole.
Every other fish leaped and dashed for open water as my snook streaked for the dock pilings. My drag whirred and fed line to a fish that seemed to have five gears and a supercharger. It was about 2 feet from a piling when I finally turned it. It surged again, this time even harder, and made another charge to the piling, but I stopped him just before he made the turn. By then, Wallerstein had the anchor on deck and used the trolling motor to pull us to open water. The snook thrashed and pounded the surface with his ample tail, but I finally got it close enough to swim into Wallerstein's net. It was 31 inches long and weighed about 9 pounds.
"Nice job there, brother!" yelled the homeowner as my boatmates slapped my back and touched fists.
"That's a 'career' snook," Strait said. "Anybody would love to catch one like that."
"Not bad for a rookie," Wallerstein said. "He wanted to get in those pilings so bad! I've seen it turn out a lot differently so many times."
A short time later, we found huge tarpon rolling in the light of the Pinellas Bayway Bridge. Wallerstein estimated at least two to be in the 150-pound range. We were out of threadfins, so Wallerstein tied on a plastic crankbait.
"They sit just inside the shadow line, and they come into the light and just gorge themselves," Wallerstein said. "The tide is moving from right to left, so throw into the dark and reel to the edge of the shadow line."
It was a cat-and-mouse game, and I timed all my casts poorly.We left after about an hour.
"I'm so happy you didn't hook one of those sons o' b******," Strait said later. "We'd have been out there all night trying to land the damn thing."
We made one last stop on another dock, where I caught three fat trout on live shrimp to end the most remarkable fishing trip of my life. Four hours later, I was at Tampa International Airport to catch a plane back home, dog tired but still buzzing from the excitement. It was better than espresso.
Sports, Pages 36 on 10/05/2008