Tampa Bay fisherman raced against Hurricane Idalia for a tough Gulf of Mexico catch
Anglers around the globe often hear stories of fish acting funny before storms.
The best time to go can be when severe weather is on the way because a dropping barometer often means fish that want to eat. If it’s safe to do so, getting out before a tropical system in the summer or a strong cold front in the winter is a great way to experience once-in-a-lifetime days on the water.
With that exact thought in mind, Scott Steiss went out before Hurricane Idalia as it strengthened south of Cuba.
“Seeing all these captains before the storm saying they just slayed it, I said we got to go out before the storm. We left at 7 p.m. last Saturday with a focus on big yellowtails at night,” Steiss explained.
His crew set up on a popular wreck in 100 feet of water just as the sun began to set. They chummed with frozen bait and had a chum block out as well. As the sun set and moonlight set in, the fishing was slow.
“We were getting some beeliners, but no real fish for an hour. We had everything covered fishing down on the bottom and some jig heads in the column,” said Steiss. “Then we got a few big yellowtails on jigs and half the boat switched.”
When the yellowtail action got hot, Steiss hooked into something bigger that he thought was a shark. It tested his spinning tackle and he tried to horse it in to get back into the snapper action, causing a pull of the hook out of the fish. The next fish did the same, and he pulled the hook once again with heavy pressure.
“Bill (Harris) and Jason (Landers) got hot in the back corner and then we saw what I was hooking up to. They were dropping shrimp on jig heads and pulling up permit! We had no idea they were there.”
After seeing the tasty and hard-fighting permit, Steiss let his next hook-up with a bigger fish play out a bit.
“It was so much fun. They’d pull drag two or three times on long runs then zig-zag all over the place. Fishing light tackle on the jig heads and spinning rods was so much more fun than dropping heavy weights. The biggest permit we caught that night was over 30 inches and we let it go because we already had our limit!”
Permit are notoriously tricky to catch for west coast anglers. They are typically targeted on reefs and wrecks with crabs for bait. Catching multiple in one trip is something few accomplish. They have tricky bag limits of two per person between 11 inches and 22 inches but no more than two over 22-inches can be kept per vessel.
After a few for the box and catching eight total to go with large yellowtail snapper, the group saw storms building in the distance so pointed back the 28-foot Caymas toward Tampa Bay.
“It was around 1 a.m. and we could see the storms on the satellite radar. We had caught plenty of fish and filled up the box. We have been eating so much snapper lately and learned those permit are delicious,” Steiss said.
