The Wandering Disciple

Englewood, Florida: The cold front had passes, the tide was in and the fish were biting out at Englewood Pier today. After the rain passed through with the cold front, we decided to hit the pier at Chadwick Park and try our luck today at high tide. Once again it was my wife leading the pack today with three fish, I came in second with two and my dad had one. Almost identical outcome from our last outing. I hope we can get my son to land one soon so it keeps his interest.  We came armed with a supply of fresh shrimp from the bait shop across the street from the pier. During this out we snagged a Crevalle Jack, a couple Snappers and some Pig Fish. Sheepshead were also biting but they were falling off as we reeled them up to the pier because of the size of the hooks. During our next trip, we are going to try and use the cast net to get our bait. There was a group using live bait caught of a cast net and they were stealing the show with their catches. We hope to have t...

Venice & Englewood, Florida: The nice crisp fall weather provided by the first cold front of the year provide great weather for a fishing Sunday. Although we were battling low tide conditions, we still managed to catch five fish in the group with my wife leading the group with three, I had two and my Dad had one. Following our success last trip, we decided to go to the South Jetty again. We armed ourselves with 2-dozen live shrimp from the Crows Nest and hit the rocks. First shrimp in the water and my wife already had a fish. Her first was a Mangrove Snapper. But we were fighting a really fast current in the Jetty enhanced by the outgoing tide. So we decided to go the Gulf side of the rocks where nothing was happening except watching a Manatee playing in the water about thirty yards offshore. We decided to hop around a bit and try some new locations. The first of these was the boat ramp at the Venice Train Depot. Despite some rather large Snook under the docks, there...

Venice, Florida: After a long hiatus from fishing, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and go fishing. We decided on the Venice Pier for today's trip. We picked up two dozen live shrimp at the pier and headed out to fish. We picked a spot mid-point on the pier and went to work. It was a very slow day on the pier, while I am used to us not really catching anything, but others around us were not having any luck either. We did catch a juvenile Crevalle Jack, a Lizardfish and a crab. While fishing, we watched a pod off dolphins playing on both sides of the pier for much of the afternoon. Since we were not having much luck at the pier, we decided to head to the South Jetty and try our luck there. We had a lot more success there. While we didn't catch a bunch, we had plenty of hits on our remaining bait. At the Jetty, we caught a Mangrove Snapper, Gag Grouper and an unidentified fish. We also observed some Snook near the seawall in which my Dad hooked...