July 10, 2012 – The first weekend of bay scallop season may have started out a bit slow due to lingering conditions from Tropical Storm Debby, but reports from this past weekend were excellent and the size of the scallops are big compared to recent years. Good reports are coming in from Crystal River, Ozello, Homosassa, and north of Bayport. However, the best reports I’ve been hearing are from Crystal River and Ozello.
With this in mind, the plan on Sunday was to go scalloping with a few good friends out of Crystal River. Besides, my host for the day and good friend, Marrio Castello, known to many as ‘Ripnlips’ on the various internet forums, had easily gotten his limit already on a couple of trips while in that area. He suggested we concentrate our efforts in four to five feet of water outside of Ozello.
Our first drop overboard proved to be a good spot and we easily began collecting numerous scallops. They were just about everywhere, however most seemed to hold up in the grassy areas. I even found a few scallops by stepping on them. That’s one of the advantages of being in water so shallow and using Columbia style wet sneakers instead of flippers.
We tried a few other spots in the same general area and each seemed to have about the same amount of scallops. At one location, I hit the jackpot and found six scallops together and literally touching each other. That’s the most I’ve ever found in one spot while scalloping and I was beside myself with that net scoop full.