February is a month for putting fish on the table. From bass on Lake Okeechobee to trout, redfish and sheepshead in the bays to grouper and snapper offshore, it’s all about catching fish for Southwest Florida anglers this month.

A winter run to a number 90 miles off Fort Myers paid off with red snapper for Robby Trammel and Billy Norris.

How about a fish that is excellent to eat, fights hard when hooked, can achieve double-digit weights, can be caught by shorebound anglers, bites well even when the weather is poor and for which the most productive season is during winter when the most people are in town? That fish is the sheepshead, a largely overlooked, strikingly striped, bucktoothed member of the porgy family which, in spite of all the endearing characteristics listed above, is probably most famous for its bait-stealing prowess.

February is the absolute peak of sheepshead season. These fish are currently schooled up in big numbers around virtually every bit of hard structure along the coast. Dock and pier pilings, beach rocks, offshore ledges, artificial reefs, wrecks, fallen trees along the beach or just about anything on which barnacles might grow attract sheepshead, sometimes in amazing numbers.

Sheepshead are primarily crustacean eaters, best caught on natural baits including shrimp, fiddler crabs, sandfleas and tube worms. While you can start an argument on some piers by debating which of these baits is best, most anglers agree that the best technique is to place your bait as close as possible to the pilings, rocks or whatever structure you’re working. Hotspots this month will include the Venice jetties, the piers at Placida, El Jobean and Sanibel, and all the bridges spanning the Intracoastal Waterway.

February usually brings the clearest, coolest water of the year to Southwest Florida. These conditions provide some of the most technically challenging sight fishing of the year for redfish anglers. During sunny afternoons; redfish cruise among the islands in Gasparilla Sound and Pine Island Sound, often in water less than two feet deep. They can be really spooky. A super-stealthy approach coupled with the ability to see cruising fish from a long ways out topped off with the ability to make long, accurate casts is the mix needed to take these fish. If this seems like too much trouble for a redfish, simply head back into the mangrove creeks and fish with shrimp under overhanging bushes in the deepest bends.

Big black drum are schooling around manmade structure now. Many of these fish exceed 30 pounds and a few push 50, and they’re not terribly difficult to catch. In fact, it’s not even necessary to use a boat because some of the best black drum fishing is under piers and bridges where pedestrian anglers can stand directly over the fish. Half a blue crab or half a clam impaled on a large, stout hook and dropped to the bottom within a foot or two of the structure is all you need to tempt these large, whisker-chinned fish. The El Jobean fishing pier and the Highway 41 bridges over the Peace River are among the most well-known places to pound a drum without a boat. Anglers with boats will also find drum under all the bridges on the Caloosahatchee River, at the artificial reefs in Charlotte Harbor and around the remains of the old phosphate dock at Boca Grande Pass.

Snook season opens February 1, but February is probably the least productive of the six months during which snook season is open. That said, this month there will be some snook taken in the rivers and canals. The El Jobean pier on the Myakka River produces snook for plug-flinging nocturnal anglers every month of the year, and some really huge snook can be taken in the residential canals at Venice, Punta Gorda, Port Charlotte and Cape Coral by anglers fishing large baits on heavy tackle.