Weather hurting short snapper season

Inshore anglers coping, busy with drum, flounder and trout

With the two-week fall red snapper season underway, Mississippi offshore anglers are doing more surfing than fishing.

And, said Billy Sullivan, it’s not a good thing.

“It’s all about surfing the Internet for weather,” said Sullivan, who was unhappy with what he is finding on various websites, “and it’s not looking good for us for at least this weekend.

“That tropical system down around the Yucatan is gonna reach the Gulf just in time to ruin this weekend. They’re calling for 5 to 7s (waves) and a lot of wind through Saturday, and even though it’s expected to be better on Sunday, it doesn’t look like it will be good enough to go.”

With only two weekends to the special season Oct. 1-14 announced just last month, it appears one is lost.

“That’s the bad thing,” Sullivan said. “For a lot of us working guys, half the season falls on those two days, Saturday and Sunday, so our season looks like it will be cut in half.”

The weather will also keep marsh fishermen closer to home, taking the Biloxi Marsh and Chandeluer Island area out of play for most boats.

“Right now, that appears the case but fortunately we’ve got options and those options are working for us,” said Capt. Sonny Schindler of Shore Thing Charters in Bay St. Louis. “We’ve had a few trips lately where we just couldn’t make the long runs to the marsh. Last weekend is a good example, when the threat of rain and thunderstorms was high. We had trips booked so we stayed close, fishing in the Bay and all five boats caught plenty of fish.”

The pilings along the U.S. Highway 90 bridge produced black drum, some redfish and trout.

“But Capt. Kenny (Kenny Shiyou) caught a limit of slot reds fishing the drains in the bay,” Schindler said. “The fishing is actually good right now and is a look at what’s ahead as the cooler months approach. The inshore fishing in the late fall and winter is excellent. We’re getting a small taste of it now.”

Tom Peterson of Ocean Springs was celebrating the arrival of an early run of flounder in his secret hot spot on Sunday.

“I won’t tell you where, but it’s a bayou around Pascagoula and it’s a place where I catch a lot of flounder in November and December,” Peterson said. “I went through the area the other day just looking and I saw a redfish working a bank and stopped to fish. I missed the red but I caught a flounder so I fished a while and caught six keepers. That’s a start. If the weather allows, I’ll be back in there this weekend to look for some more.”