Over 150 shrimp washed onto Apollo Beach after last weekend’s storm front
In the famous words of Bubba from Forrest Gump, “Shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it… Pan fried, deep fried, stir-friend,” and on and on.
Shrimp also happens to be one of my favorite treats from the Gulf, and if I was as lucky as Shawn Speidel I would have felt like a kid in a candy store.
Last Sunday, Speidel found himself in the Apollo Beach area. It was on the backside of a line of severe storms and a cold morning in the 40’s with extremely strong northwest winds, not favorable for fishing. But Speidel went near the Apollo Beach power plant where consistent warm water provides a haven from the cold.
“I was going to the beach early in the morning to fish, but didn’t have any bait that day. When my girlfriend and I got out there the tide was really low,” Speidel explained.
The Port Manatee tide chart shows an extremely dramatic and historic tide flow. Ahead of the storm, the tide reached 3.41 feet on Saturday, March 12, when it was predicted to be at 1.1 feet.
Less than 18 hours later, the tide was predicted to be low at -.29, but the North winds behind the front pushed water out of the bay. The result was an actual tide at -1.66 feet on Sunday, meaning a tide change of more than 5 feet!
Most Florida tide days range differing from 1.5 to 2.5 feet.
“We were the first ones on the beach and started walking. That’s when we started noticing all the shrimp and my girlfriend said ‘What’s up with this?’ There were no footprints, no birds yet or anything,” said Speidel.
The pair walked along and Speidel started filling up bags with the shrimp. Most were jumbo shrimp, between 7 and 8 inches. For nearly 100 yards, he said the beach had big shrimp every few feet, and by the end of the walk he gathered what he thinks there were 150 or more.
“They were all lively so couldn’t have been out of water for long. My girlfriend is a marine biologist and we’ve been going back and forth about why it happened. One thought is that big fish were scaring them up in the shallows, but since it was over a such a long stretch that’s unlikely,” he surmised.
“Or the rough waters the night before pushed them up and they couldn’t swim back out. A lot of them had their legs in the sand like they were trying to get back out but couldn’t do it into the wind.”
With the rare event, Speidel took advantage to grab his portion before the sun came further overhead and the birds soon found the bounty.
“Once that sun came up the birds found them and were all over the beach,” Speidel said. “It had to be perfect timing for us. I made a meal with a good portion and saved the rest for bait in the freezer. Now I need to figure out how to catch shrimp at night next!”