Tilapia have become the fabled fish of the sea. In warm weather, anglers fill ice chests and buckets with their catches after a few hours of fishing. The silver-sided fish will bite through the year, until the water dips below 60 degrees. Tilapia cannot tolerate a sustained water tempera-ture below 57 degrees. When this occurs, as it did last month, the fish die by the thousands.
Worms are the top bait for tilapia, which bite readi-ly at the shoreline.
Most are in the two to three pound range. The taste is said to resemble that of scallops. Sargo are the most likely fish to bite from now to early spring. Most sargo taken are in the two pound class, up to 14 inches. The silver perch-like fish can be recognized by one or two black bars running down its sides.