‘Peak’ fishing season? How spring weather changes fish patterns on Florida’s Gulf Coast

March is Captain Devin Calderon’s favorite month to fish.

“Right now through the end of March is the peak of the fishing season,” said Calderon, who grew up in Bradenton and went to Manatee High School.

“You can go offshore and get tuna, African pompano, red grouper, hogfish and mangrove snapper,” Calderon added. “Or you can go inshore and when we get these warm days, it is as much as you can get trout, redfish and snook with the rising water temperatures.”

Calderon runs both an inshore and an offshore charter fishing business with multiple boats, giving him the option of where he wants to fish. On some days he does both, like this past Wednesday, when he had a large variety of fish for his clients to take home after starting the morning in the Gulf before coming back inshore.

“If the weather looks good, I’ll ask my clients what they want to do. On that day, they said they wanted to get fish to keep. I saw the tide was really low early and the weather was perfect for a run offshore. So I told them we’d run nearshore early then come back in to fish the better tide in the middle of the day.”

Before the charter started Calderon headed to the Skyway fishing piers where he loaded up on whitebait for the afternoon portion of the charter. For the morning portion, he brought frozen shrimp to target hogfish.

“We ran out to 42 to 45 feet of water, about 7 to 8 miles offshore. We got three keeper hogfish and a keeper red grouper. I’ve seen quite a few keeper red grouper in shallow this year which is a bit unusual. The mangrove snapper also started to show up,” Calderon explained.

“After that, we came back inshore. We caught probably 20 trout with six of them over 24 inches. Then about 20 snook with one that would have been slot-sized and five or six redfish too. It was my favorite type of fishing day,” he added.

Calderon used the same light tackle for both, switching up between weighted rigs for the bottom fishing nearshore to free-lined tackle with no weight in the afternoon.

As a transitional month for many fish, March can lead to not only great fishing but also options for anglers. The large variety Calderon landed on a warm February day is the epitome of how good fishing can be in the early spring along Florida’s West Coast. Calderon says that could get even better.

“Tuna will show up soon, usually the middle of March is the start for them to be here consistently. Then we’ll have African pompano as a good option too,” said Calderon. “If we get a good weather day, I love to be offshore, but if not there are a lot of good options to catch inshore too.”

When water temperatures warm up a bit more to the mid 70s, kingfish will also show up. The Gulf is very clean, which usually leads to a good kingfish run.

Captain Devin Calderon can be reached through his website www.ChaseTheBlueCharters.com.