A calm January means Tampa Bay anglers can catch one of the Gulf’s coolest looking fish

With slick, calm weather to start the second week of January, Gulf anglers were able to head to some unique bottom and target one of the coolest-looking and best-tasting offshore fish.

“It was so nice out, barely a ripple,” said John Rendemonti, who was offshore Monday with friends. “It got kind of hot when we started fishing since there was no wind.”

Rendemonti and friends headed more than 50 miles west into the Gulf where they stopped at a spring to target yellowtail snapper and were hopeful for African pompano.

African pompano are elusive for hook and line anglers, often eating last on a spot after more aggressive fish take baits first. But the winter time seems to be prime time when schools head to big offshore bottom and mix in with other species of the jack family, so the group set up a chum slick to bring in pelagic and bottom fish.

“We ended up in the middle of a bunch of fish shows around the spring and put out a bag of chum. We put a couple light jig lines and flat lines out the back. After a little, we saw a cobia swim by and tried throwing some chunks and bait at it but it went down,” recalled Rendemonti.

Aaron Albritton grabbed a rod with a big bucktail and went to the bow, dropped the big bucktail down to the bottom in hope of finding the cobia in the water column.

“I saw the cobia and saw it take off toward the bottom. The big buck tail was probably 3 or 4 ounces,” Albritton said. “I went to the bow since there were so many lines out the back. After jigging for a bit, I was kind of over it so started to bring it up and that’s when the line started ripping with a fish. It spit the hook but said ‘OK, maybe we’re onto something.’ I jigged again and then had another fish on.”

With a good fight going on for Albritton, Rendemonti helped clear the lines off the back to avoid tangles. Eventually Albritton looked down and saw their target in the clear and calm water.

After not much longer, they lifted a beautiful African pompano in the boat and celebrated.

“I caught one last year on a wreck fishing with a small jig for yellowtails. It was a fun fight on the light tackle. The one this week was bigger than that one.”

When they resumed fishing Rendemonti started fishing with a slow pitch jig, hoping to find another African pompano in the water column.

“We put everything back out. It didn’t seem to matter because next we had a quadruple header with four on at once!” Rendemonti said.

“The light two rods broke off but we looked down and had two more African pompano coming up. With the boat limit of only two we kept the bigger one and let the smaller one go, it was awesome having that many on at once.”

When the action at the spring slowed, they moved on for red grouper, landing eight big ones.

But it was their African pompano catch that highlighted the day, and one they enjoyed at the table soon after.