Boca Grande Back to the Basics!


By, Captain Tim Whitfield and Jake Whitfield

A fter being on the water as much as I have been the last few months, I needed a vacation! So what does a fishing guide do on vacation……..FISH! It may seem like an odd thing to do with my spare time, but this is my addiction and guiding is my job. Being a guide puts me on the water a lot, but I don't really get to fish very much. With that said, my personal fishing has taken a big hit over the last couple of years. Missing my personal fishing sounds kind of weird when I'm out there all the time, but I simply do not get to go for myself as often as I would like!

The story. My wife and daughter were on their way to North Carolina for a gymnastics competition, and Jake and I left early for Boca to fish the way we like to fish. We prefer to fish without tossing the net, no sardines, no greenbacks, no dirtying up the boat and no hunting the bait for an hour only to start fishing after "prime time"! We decided on the drive down to toss our favorite artificial baits, gold spoons and DOA shad tails!

Jake and I found a simple pattern of drifting bars and fishing the drop off's for snook and we did pretty good the first afternoon, landing 6 or 8 around 25 inches long. On day two my friend Danny came down to fish with us and we began fishing with DOA shad tails on an 1/8th oz jig head in just inches of water at the end of the outgoing tide. Swimming the baits through the mul- let and tossing at pushes, we boated snook after snook! After a while, the three of us figured we would run from the Stump Pass area to Bull and Turtle Bays. Because we were in the poling skiff, we could do make the run and burn very little fuel! We tossed the jigs at some of our old haunts and scored on an awesome snook bite. When the bite tapered off we began fishing mullet schools and tossing spoons and we did some damage on lower and mid slot reds. Jake has a method of retrieving his spoon, a steady reel and twitch, he does well but I can't get it to work for me. I just stick with a steady retrieve! Jake, Danny and I had done it, we managed to not have to throw the net for the first 4 days of our vacation, but Robin and Delanie were due in and ready to bend some rods! I got the net and bucket loaded in the Action Craft and Robin, Delanie and I headed to the bait flat….ugh! The bait was pretty small, but we got plenty.

Robin and Delanie are rigged with circle hooks and corks and baited up. They toss out the baits and I toss out the jig, one twitch and WHAM! Fish on! A solid snook! Delanie got a small red on a small pilchard and I made a second cast with the same result! I had brought some rods rigged for jigging, a 6'9 " Deep South shaky head, yep a Bass rod, but they work great for jigs, being kind of short a 6'9" is perfect for me! In a matter of a few casts Robin was on the snook bite and Dela- nie was toasting the trout and ladyfish! Both of them were hooked, they never even noticed that I had emptied the livewell! That was the end of catching bait and for two weeks we fished the spoons and Jigs. My Dad came down and fell right into the shad tail groove, catching a fish on his first cast. Slams were had just about every trip using all artificials, just jigs and spoons, pretty basic stuff, with extraordinary results. How we did it. We fished! We fished the basic stuff you read about all the time; we fished deep water with a good flow. If the water was not moving the fish were not either! On the lower tides we fished sand bars with bait schooled up on the edge and swam the baits through the schools. This method produced snook, reds and trout. By swimming I mean steadily reeling the artificial through the school of bait just fast enough to keep it off the bottom. This technique became a standard for us while fishing in bait or mullet schools. We only jigged the shad tails in deeper water, over 3 feet. If we were in 3 feet or less with mullet and/or bait we swam the baits.

The spoon is one of the oldest artificial baits; my favorites are the Capt. Mikes and The Secret. These baits are steadily retrieved through the bait and mullet schools, or a steady retrieve and twitch like Jake does (still not working for me). Jake has put on several clinics for me, maybe one day I'll get it! Spoons seem to work the best for me in mullet schools. We did not just fish randomly, we did not fish spots, we fished areas, the areas that had birds diving on baits, mullet schools and points with mullet on them! The areas changed every day, the results did not! Jake and his crab flush! Jake went out on his own on a hill tide, the afternoon heat was absolutely relentless, and here is what he found in his own words.

I went out to search for redfish and found myself doing a lot of driving around, trolling shorelines and drifting flats throwing spoons and jigs trying to come across something that I had not yet discovered. I went to a shoreline that was close to a pass and was drifting quickly along with the tide using the trolling motor just enough to keep the boat in good position to work the area. I was using a simple bait, nothing fancy, an 1/8th oz jig head with a DOA shad tail. The bait color was black back with silver flakes in it. As I was drifting along I quickly noticed that the water was deep, not just deep where the boat was, but also just as deep up at the mangrove line, then I noticed that there were small crabs flushing. I was watching one of the crabs staying just on the surface and I saw something roll on it and kind of slurp it in. The first thing that came to my mind was tarpon since they are the only fish I have ever watched slurping crabs! As I eased my way down the shoreline I noticed another crab flushing and saw another fish slurp it down, so I quickly made a cast. I immediately hooked up and realized what I had on the other end of the line! Immediately it made sense to me what was going on! The redfish were stacked up on the bottom and when they saw a crab flushing on the top they would go get it. I trolled back to where I saw them the first time and started to bump my jig along the bottom at a steady pace with a bit of change in speed and motion here and there. After a few casts I had another red in the boat. I put him back in the water and another one rolled on up a crab, I made a cast bumped it a few times and he was on.

They were literally stacked in there like cord wood. I gave my Dad a call and told him what was happening, I ran back to the canal so that my Dad, his buddy Danny Wade and my little sister Delanie could get in on the action. We went back to the same spot and used the same techniques and caught them again. Delanie caught one 33 inches, Danny hooked a small tarpon and Dad zeroed out! We did this for the next 3 days, and my Dad caught his share! This was the first time any of us had witnessed redfish doing this. Final thoughts. Jake did not want me to say this, but he found those fish on his own! He has a knack for this and as a father I was very proud of the fact that he found redfish on his own. Finding the reds slurping crabs like a tarpon was a very unique experience for us all. Jake is going to be a great fisherman, much better than me. He will witness many tides come and go. In this business a keen eye is a must in this sport and I can only imagine the heights he will reach, the fish that will feel the sting of his hook set and the future sunrises and sunsets he will witness from the deck of my boat, and soon enough, his own! In sixteen days, I threw the net one time for bait (and didn't use it)…now that's a vacation! Capt. Tim Whitfield owns and oper- ates Swift Fish charters, fishing All of Tampa Bay and beyond! Something for everyone for novice to hard core, fly and instructional charters available! To fish with Tim he can be reached at 813-714-0889, check out the monthly specials on his website www.swiftfishcharters.com