The fishing keeps getting better with warmer water, more daylight

Working a normal 9-to-5 over the past four months brought early darkness with little time to sneak in a few hours outdoors when the workday ends. But today is the day for evening anglers to rejoice, as they get an extra hour of daylight to get in recreational activities.

As a bonus, now is this time that fishing in the afternoon can be better than other points of the day. With the reluctance of winter to leave us since March began, the daytime heating can produce ideal afternoon flats temperatures, making fish become more active. Capt. Griffin Deans has noticed this recently, and I joined him earlier last week to see how the afternoon bite has been.

“An hour before sunset the fish have been turning on,” Deans said. “We’ve been getting a trout on pretty much every cast and it’s easy to get a limit in a short time. Most fish are between 15- and 18-inches.”

We pushed into Terra Ceia around 4 p.m. aboard Deans’ 24-foot rebuilt Proline, leaving about two and a half hours of daylight. A stiff, cool, southern wind signaled the approaching front that would be arriving before the next morning. Deans pulled up to a mangrove shoreline with the tide higher than predicted due to the south wind. After a handful of chummed whitebaits were sacrificed, he caught and released a small snook.

A few more small snook later we bounced around the corner to another set of mangroves. My father, Rob, landed another small snook. As Deans fired up his Mercury to keep moving, a bigger fish decided to eat my bait and hightail it straight into the mangroves, parting my 20-pound leader and breaking me off. It could have been a slot-sized snook but instead remains the one that got away.

We quickly worked around a few more spots, picking off a few snook around each. A particular mangrove point in Terra Ceia produced about eight snook as the outgoing tide picked up.

With about 30 minutes of daylight left Deans told us it was about the best time to fish. If we wanted to go catch trout we could get into one after the other, but we opted to keep focus on snook and maybe a redfish or two.

The last spot was make it or break it. A deep hole just off the mangroves. Deans began to empty the remaining baits from the well to entice fish.

Not long after, my dad hooked into an elusive redfish around 22 inches.

About five minutes later, Deans was on with an even bigger fish. “It’s a good red,” he said.

I grabbed the net as he skillfully brought it closer to the boat with his 4000 Shimano Sustain and G. Loomis rod. It was a 27-inch beauty of a redfish. “It’s been a while since I’ve caught a redfish this big,” Deans commented.

A couple minutes later as the sun was disappearing, a third red around 23 inches was landed. We left with a minute amount of daylight remaining to avoid a pitch-black run home in the dark.

Deans is anticipating the fishing getting better as the water warms up. He says he’ll begin to switch his focus to evening snook fishing and nighttime tarpon fishing in the Manatee River.

Capt. Griffin Deans can be reached through his website slotmachinefishingcharters.com or at 941-920-1862.

This story was originally published March 10, 2018 at 11:46 AM with the headline "The fishing keeps getting better with warmer water, more daylight."