Fishing Regulations

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Moon Out During the Day?

If the moon is out during the day generally the fishing bite will be very slow. I have no idea why, even my inquiries with commercial fishermen fails to explain this observation. Do not despair, as the moon begins to set, the bite will aggressively increase as the moon gets lower and lower on the horizon!

The Moon’s Effect on Catching

Full Moon at night and the fish feed all night since they can see better with the water illuminated by the moon. Bite will be slow during the following morning since their bellies are full. Not much sense to go out at the crack of dawn. However the “bite” will start to recover around noon offering good afternoon catches,

Poetry in Motion- Successfully Throwing a Baitcaster Reel

Poetry in Motion- Successfully Throwing a Baitcaster Reel 

Several months after deciding upon buying a baitcaster reel you have finally squirreled away enough money to make your purchase. Excitedly you attach  the reel to the rod, tie on your favorite lure, haul back and let it fly. Frrruummmppptttt. DAMN the mother of all bird’s nests. Too bad the directions with the reel did not offer one bit of guidance on the art of calibrating and throwing a baitcaster reel. 

Back to basics, why did you purchase a baitcaster? Several reasons; it usually throws further than a spinning reel since the line comes off the spool directly parrallal to the rod. A spinning reel released line in a coil that leaves the reel 90 degrees to the rod shaft. The spinning reel line must now be uncoiled and throttled down to slide through the guides. All of the line movement causes friction reducing the casting distance of the spinning reel.  The line on a baitcaster also exits the reel  in a smooth thin strand of line. The spinning reel  releases coils of line that need to be “thinned” out by the gradual  diameter reduction of the rod guides which causes distance reducing friction.  

I have also found that baitcasters eliminate line twist. 

 No need for swivels since the line on the spool is not released ninety degrees to the rod. 

If the spinner has had a break off and loses some line the spinner will not cast as far as when the spinner had a full spool of line. This is due to increased friction of the line rubbing on the partially filled spool lip. The baitcaster  will throw as far with a  full spool or half a spool of line. 

 Baitcasters last longer. Less moving parts, no bail, no finicky bail spring, no worm gears and the related  stress of transferring power ninety degrees from the handle to the rotor and spool. No up and down spool ossiccillation either.   

Cast a baitcaster too far, add some thumb pressure to mend the cast and feather the lure so it drops at the foot of the mangroves instead of hanging that eight dollar lure in the middle of a snake and mesquito infested cay. This can be done with a spinner, however it is harder to control and takes two hands while the baitcaster takes only one. 

Rod choice for a baitcaster is very important. If you are going off shore or surfcasting heavy spoons a rod with a fast stiff tip will work fine. With this set up and experience you can put a lure out into the surf one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet.  For inshore/backwater fishing of light lures in the one half ounce and less range I suggest a slower tip rod that will bend more on the back swing. This softer tip loads up the rod and helps you to sling the light lure out. Remember the slower the tip on a rod, the less casting accuracy you will have. 

The reel itself requires some adjustments before you start. On the left side (as you hold it in the casting position) of the reel is an adjustment which I call the casting ability adjustment. This  adjustment  slows down the spool during the cast. This adjustment may be external or internal. The external adjustments have a mechanism to add friction to the spool during the cast, slowing it down somewhat and reducing the casting distance. Other styles of baitcasting reels utilize either a magnetic or centrifical adjustment that must be accessed from the inside of the reel.   

As a beginner set these adjustments to maximize cast control, worry about distance when you educate your thumb. 

The other control is on the right side of the reel, under the star drag, (where it is next to impossible to access). This  is the lure weight adjustment, (LWA). This is adjusted for each different lure weight you are casting. To make this adjustment, tie the lure on and hold the rod at a forty five degree angle from the ground. Tighten the LWA firmly. Release the reel clutch and gradually untighten the LWA until the lure starts to pull line off the rod. You may now slightly tighten the lwa or leave it alone if you are experienced with a baitcaster. 

Now you are ready to PRACTICE casting your baitcaster in the BACKYARD. Practice casting downwind since casting into the wind without some experience and control can cause a birdsnest. Bird’s nests  occur when the initial lure speed is slowed by the opposing  wind and the spool keeps spinning off line quicker than the lure is pulling it out.  As you become more experienced with a baitcaster you can practice casting across the wind and eventually into the wind. Even though the reels have casting adjustments your thumb must compensate for the casting conditions by gently feathering the spool speed during the cast. The heavier the lure the less thumb you will need. 

When casting into the wind I find it helpful to use a sidearm motion to help keep the lure out of the eye of the wind. The sidearm motion helps keep bird’s nest to a minimum and can maximize distance cast. 

When you do get a bird’s nest carry a golf tee to help unravel the mess, it will not hurt your line. I have found that if the bird’s nest a bad one, removing the spool from the reel body makes it a lot easier to unravel.  

ENHANCE YOUR FISHING PLEASURE

ENHANCING YOUR FISHING ADVENTURES 

Several  tackle tips have been swimming around my head that can help make your fishing day on the  more enjoyable. Some my own ideas and some  offered to  others. One of the benefits of owning a fishing tackle/marine  supple shop is that I receive plenty  of suggestions from various people on how to do “such and such”. 

Let’s start with a money saver. I am always saving plastic jugs, filling them with water and freezing them for ice. As a bachelor I can get away with a freezer filled up with plastic jugs of ice. This probably does  not go over well in a more domesticated household situation. So why not stop on your way to the boat ramp or fishing pier by a McDonald’s restaurant, they sell ten pound bags of ice for $1.00 each. We can thank  Captain Hank Williams for this cube of information. 

Lately we have been doing a lot of drift fishing over hard bottom for red grouper. A drift anchor to slow the boat’s drift for this style of fishing. A drift anchor makes it a lot easier to drag bottom with less weight. These speciality anchors are a funnel shaped piece of vinyl or canvas that is tethered to the stern, bow or amidships of your boat. The apex of the drift anchor has a hole cut into it to help keep a flow of water through it so it does not flatten out in the water and become inefficient. They look like a miniature parachute. The hole also facilitates retrieval of the drift anchor. Fifteen to twenty feet of tether line should be enough to get the rig working for you. Be sure to have a large swivel attached at the  end to avoid line twist.  

Various sizes of drift anchors are used depending upon the length of the boat involved.  

We hate to use our gunnel or cabin top rod holders for gaff and landing nets storage. Gaffs in rod holders are a safety hazard.  We have installed rod holder clamps on the stern of our boat and hung our landing equipment accessible yet out of the way while fishing. 

When it came to cabin top rod holders I directed the fabricater to make the rod holders vertical, eliminating the aft slant. The vertical design is a bit harder to grab a rod from, however when casting The area above the aft deck of the boat is wide open and we do not find ourselves smacking the rods stored in the cabin top rod holders since the rods stand straight up in the air. 

Several years ago a customer came in with a Penn 7500 ss completely frozen with internal corrosion. I spray in a product called “Strike Hold” which is designed to clean lubricate and protect equipment from corrosion. After a few minutes the reel began to turn, not smoothly, however we got it working .  I have used the Strike Hold product since then, it cuts the grease and grime, displaces water and sets up a protective barrier on your equipment that actually beads water. Strike-Hold is a multi-function product that cleans, lubricates, protects, demoisturizes and conditions.  (http://www.strike-hold.com) 

The other day I was venting my concerns regarding the large amount of fishing spots I have accumulated on my Gps to Captain Larry Mc Guire and how I was afraid of having the gps short out erasing all of my fishing spots. Mc Guire told me that the Garmin gps I owned could download all of my fishing spots onto a chip that is inserted into the Mapsource port.  I  aquired one of these chips and proceeded to back up my gps. It seems that the hundreds of hours spent accumulating hot spots over the past seven years took all of five seconds to back up.  Oh, well pop my bubble. 

Capn John Guy 

TACKLE TIPS

Several ideas to improve your fishing adventures are on my agenda this month.  The standard grouper/snapper fishing rig in Florida is the sliding egg sinker rigged above the hook. While being very popular I would like to suggest an alternative rig. I rig my grouper/snapper rigs with the sinker at the bottom of the line secured by a split shot.  A dropper loop is then tied to the leader with a swivel at the end of the loop.  A leader with the hook is attached to the swivel.  

There are several reasons I prefer this rig. The first reason is that I feel having the lead at the bottom of the line makes the rig more sensitive to the fish bite. When the line to the hook goes through the egg sinker in the standard rig there can be some slack in the line. It may take a second or two for the fish to take the slack out of the line before one detects the bite. With the sinker at the bottom of the fishing line any bite or nibble vibration is instantly detected by the angler. 

Need more or less weight? No need to retie the rig, just open the split shot and slide the new weight on and secure the split shot.  Many times it is the sinker that gets hung up on the bottom. With the sinker secured by a split shot just a short tug will release the sinker and the hook portion of the rig will easily come up. No need to retie the entire rig. 

There are various systems designed to store trolling lures, from the simple narrow spool to wind the leader onto, to the elaborate and expensive boxes.  Why not make your own trolling lure container.  Get a five gallon bucket and a length of 3” pvc tubing Cut the pvc tubing to lengths that are equal to the height of the bucket.  Drill several 1/4 “ holes in the bottom of the bucket. Insert the pvc tubes in the bucket. Now drop in your lures. When done fishing you can rinse the lures with fresh water which will drain out the holes you drilled into the bottom of the bucket. 

Bait well pumps constantly are breaking down. In our retail store we do a tidy business with the replacement cartridges for these popular pumps. We have been recommending to our customers that they replace these baitwell pumps with a washdown pump. These units  while costing a few dollars more last a lot longer. The wash down pumps also move more water per hour keeping your bait alive. If rigged with a “Y” valve then you can also have a salt water washdown system.   

Spools of leader material lying around on the boat always seem to be disorganized. Plano makes a case that holds several spools of leader. The position for each spool has a small hole molded in to pull out the desired amount of the leader  making your selection quick and easy.  Plano manufacturers two sizes, one model accommodates spools 1’ wide and the other model accommodates spools 1.875” wide.Top of Form 

During October I was fishing mangrove snapper at the skyway rock piles with my brother and my daughter. He had brought along some gummy bears to eat and decided to try one as bait. Sure enough he caught several mangrove snappers on the gummy bears. By the way, red seemed to work best. 

Hopefully these tips or variations of them can make your fishing trips more enjoyable. 

PUMPING POMPANO

Pumping Pompano in Sarasota Bay 

Monday morning August 27th was an ideal day for the pompano bite in Sarasota Bay. Full moon (new moon also works), morning incoming tide, a reasonably cool breeze before the mid day sun arrived. Usually on Mondays I am on an  offshore gig, however due to the preceding positive factors my buddy Bill talked me into a pompano pier outing. Since Bill is one of the master pompano “pumpers” in the area, I agreed to cancel my offshore trip. 

We arrive at the Tony Sapretto pier which is located under the east end of the causeway going over to Siesta Key near downtown Sarasota. The pier is near  Hart’s Landing bait shop. Daybreak was at seven, approximately when we arrived. From what I learned, pompano do  not bite aggressively  at night. We quickly got set up at one of the three key pompano spots on the pier before the sun barely raised it’s head. 

Light tackle, six foot rods will do. I spooled with 20 pound Ohero Dynema braid. Good stuff, Dynema is thinner and stronger than the Spectra fiber used in many of the  older established brands of braided line. My low profile baitcaster was in “lock down” mode, when these little guys hit, you do not want them running into pilings, no line holds up to oysters.  

We used  “Silly Willy” pompano jigs of the 3/8 ounce variety with the small teasers about a foot above the main lure, yellow lures  with pink teasers. The Silly Willy pompano jigs are designed to emulate a sand flea bouncing a puff of sand dust off the bottom, these lures are easy to use and can be deadly. We fished the side of the pier the tide was leaving from, the north since we had an incoming tide.  

We commenced to drop our lures slightly up under the pier. When the lure hit bottom and settled, we rapidly twitched the rod twice, lifting the tip approximately six inches each time, my fishing  rod had a stiff tip (Okuma im7 Solaris). If your fishing pole is has a softer tip you may need to work it twelve inches or so.. After four to six twitches, a foot to eighteen inches of line was let our and when the lure settled the twitching began again.  We repeated this procedure alternating twitching and letting line out until the lure no longer held the bottom. The bottom is the best place to hook pompano although occaisionally they will bite higher in the water column..   

Over the three hour flow of tide I saw 20 pompano caught. A fair amount for the four regulars working the pier. As a warning, do not tell anyone you are going pompano fishing, you will get more requests for the tasty filets than you catch! 

Captain John Guy 

Fishermen’s Headquarters