Outdoors Column | Elsa was good for something. Fishing was better than ever after storm

As Hurricane Elsa skirted along Florida’s west coast, it brought with it many questions for Gulf Coast anglers.

Would it break apart red tide present in Tampa Bay? How would it affect the fishing after the storm? Where would fish be moving with so much rainfall?

Few seemed concerned about the strength of Elsa, and people like Capt. Griffin Deans were more eager to get back out following the storm with the change it would bring with it. After taking off Tuesday and Wednesday to ride out the storm, he was back on the water Thursday fishing two trips with clients.

“Before the storm it was starting to get pretty solid,” Deans said when speaking of fishing for redfish, a summertime favorite. “We’d get one or two here or there so you knew they were showing up. The day after the storm it was triples and doubles, like they came out of nowhere.”

Deans frequents areas around southern Tampa Bay, into Terra Ceia and the Manatee River down to the intercoastal waterways. Before the storm he noted red tide had not been present yet in these areas with reports still to the north. But as the storm unleashed up to a foot of rain in eastern Manatee County, he noticed the water quality was changed on his first trip after.

“The water was nasty, dark, and brown. I think most of that was from all the rain being dumped up river and flushing out and the salinity dropped. But that’s how I like it and when I know the redfish will show up. I think a lot of these fish push out from the river and creeks and that’s when I start lighting them up.”

During his morning trip the bite started fairly slow. Snook were in their normal places and eating cut bait. It took a few stops before Deans found the redfish and put live pilchards to work. By the end of short trip, his anglers had caught probably 20 redfish and a dozen snook.

On the second trip he went back to snook fishing, noting the afternoons have been great this summer.

“The big outgoing afternoon tides have been all the snook you want. We got another 40 in the afternoon trip and a handful of redfish so they’re still eating in the dirty water. At times it seemed like they had problems finding the bait but that should stay good into the fall.”

Heading into the warmest months of the year Deans will be out as early as his clients are willing to fish.

“Late July and August I want to be fishing right when the sun is rising. It’s redfish season, and you got to be up early to whack them for an hour or two then go snook fish for a few hours before the heat of the day. I love this time of year, and the storm seemed to make it even better.”

Capt. Griffin Deans can be reached at 941-920-1862.

This story was originally published July 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM.