This past week was a lot of fun. I had a new baby girl! Well, my wife actually delivered her but was there to hold my wife’s hand Plus, we jumped over 15 tarpon, landed some cobia, hooked some sharks, put several sea trout in the cooler and caught more mackerel than myself or any of my clients could count! What and awesome week!

Tampa Bay fishing has been great! Tarpon have again stolen the show. If you have a little patience, there’s nothing from stopping you from catching a fish of a lifetime right now. We’re hooking between 3 and 7 tarpon per trip with many being in the low 100lb range. Inbetween tarpon bites we’re also getting a good mackerel bite, some grouper, a few snapper and also a few cobia.

We’re fishing the Sunshine Skyway bridge in St. Petersburg for the most part right now but there are also some tarpon spread out along several area beaches. Threadfin herring has been the ticket to the best bite and we’ve been starting the charters early in the morning to try to beat the heat and to also beat the afternoon thunderstorms.

If you ever wanted to hook a “silver king” now is the time. The fish will be here until at least early October but the sooner the better as migratory fish will begin leaving the area in a month or so while resident fish will move up into the bay.

Call 813-300-2147 to book your Tampa Bay tarpon fishing charter today!

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I must confess that I have been slacking when it comes to posting fishing reports. I hope you guys will forgive me. It’s just been that I’ve been so busy fishing that I haven’t really had the time or the energy. But, the fishing has been so good that it deserves a report so here ya go!

Tarpon: What can I say? It’s tarpon time! They’re on the beaches, in the passes and at the bridges. And we’ll be catching them all the way through September. The hot bait at the bridges has been pass crabs and on the beaches they’ve been doing back flips over scaled sardines. The beach as been really fun because you can see the fish, cast to them and then watch them crush your bait.

Check out this video of some of this weeks tarpon catches!

Spanish Mackerel: The spanish mackerel bite has been really good and we’ve been getting some real bruisers. Good moving water and live sardines have been the ticket. They’re pretty good table fair and you can keep a whole bunch of them so if you are looking to fill a cooler this is your best bet.

Speckled Trout: Surprisingly, we’ve been catching a ton of 20″+ fish. Usually in the summer time the fish tend to be a bit smaller than they are during the rest of the year but this year, we’ve been whacking some really nice sized fish. Fishing low tide in pot holes and deep cuts has been the ticket.

Redfish: The redfish bite in the summer time is typically slow here and this year is par for the course. It’s no problem finding tons of them but getting them to eat is a challenge. We can still target them if you’d like but you’ll be passing up the fish that are biting the best for fish that will test your patience. Trust me, it’s not that I don’t want to target them, they’re my favorite fish to target, it’ll just take a lot of patience if redfish is what you want right now.

Snook: We caught a good deal of snook in the spring but have not been targeting them this summer very much. There are too many other fun fish to catch that have been more willing to cooperate to spend much time on them. We can target them but see the redfish report for what you can expect.

Sharks: We’ve got sharks coming out of our ears. If you want to catch a monster, toothy critter, then just let me know. We can get anything from 3′ blacktips to 200lb+ bulls without much trouble.

Grouper: We’re not targeting them per say, but we’ve put 3 grouper over 27″ in the boat in the past week while fishing for other fish. Plus untold numbers of smaller grouper. If targeted, we should do pretty well with them.

Again, to reiterate…. WE HAVE NO OIL HERE! Come fishing! Our beaches are clean and the fishing is great!

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So you have catching a tarpon on your bucket list huh? Well, a Tampa Bay tarpon fishing charter is your best bet and in this post I’ll tell you the best dates for you to get your chance at catching a Tampa Bay tarpon and I will also tell you why these dates are so special.

There are other things to fish for May-July but with Tarpon being in full swing, why fish for anything else!?!? We’re talking about 60-200lbs of pure adrenaline rush hooked at the end of your line! Reel smoking runs, death defying leaps and brute strength! Catching a tarpon is truly a catch of a lifetime! If I end up with ANY days open in May, June or July, you can bet you’ll find me tarpon fishing on my day off. That’s how addicted I am to it. You don’t want to miss out on this!

Don’t wait to book you trip! You might think I’m blowing smoke but it’s true. Over 12 people missed out on trips in March and April because they waited to book their trip inside of a week from the date they wanted to go and I was already booked. As soon as you know you want to catch a tarpon, book it. Make sure you get the best dates. Click here to reserve your charter ONLINE RESERVATIONS

KEEP READING TO SEE WHICH DATES HAVE THE BEST TIDES FOR TARPON IN MAY,  JUNE and JULY!

Tampa Bay has thousands of resident tarpon that stay here year round but we also have a huge influx of large migratory tarpon that visit Tampa Bay every year, usually starting in late April or early May. These migratory fish will mingle with our resident fish throughout the Tampa Bay area but a large majority of the tarpon will congregate near the mouth of Tampa Bay including near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and Egmont Key.

We can catch tarpon pretty regularly from May through September but the best months are May, June and July. And we can get even more specific than that. In Tampa Bay we have what is called a “Hill Tide” twice a month. These hill tides are tides in which we only have one incoming tide and one outgoing tide each day and they last for about 5 days each time they occur.

What’s so special about a hill tide? Well, the outgoing tide on a hill tide day in the Tampa Bay area is very strong. So strong that the crabs that live in Tampa Bay can’t hold on to the sea floor and they get flushed out of Tampa Bay. You know what a tarpon’s favorite food is? You guessed it, crabs! So when these crabs are getting flushed out of Tampa Bay, the tarpon bite turns on… big time!

So… are you ready to hook a 150lb+ fish that jumps, screams drag off of your reel and leaves you breathless?

Here are the dates that you simple must book if catching a Tampa Bay tarpon is on your 2010 things to do…

April 30th – 31st

May 1st – 3rd

May 12th – 18th

May 27th – 29th

June 10th – 15th

June 23rd – 27th

July 8th – 14th

July 20th – 27th

To reserve your Tampa Bay tarpon fishing charter right now, CLICK HERE!

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All winter long I dreamed of these days. It seemed as if they would never come again! But they are finally here!!! It’s tarpon season and sore arms, worn out backs, buckets of sweat and the biggest smiles you have ever seen are plastered on worn out faces as we are now in the midst of some stellar tarpon fishing action in Tampa Bay. Tarpon have invaded Tampa Bay and if you pick your days right, you can have a trip on a lifetime. Make sure to check my “Best Tapon Dates of 2010″ to know which day you should book for your best chances at catching a fish of a lifetime.

Right now we’re in the middle of a “hill tide” week and the crabs are flushing and the tarpon are eating them up. There are some real bruisers around right now. Yesterday we had one fish that was well over 200lbs and took 2 men 2.5 hours to boat. We’ve also been getting several fish in the 100-135lb range and we can whip those in under 45 minutes. I’ve been hearing several reports of people getting into fish constantly in the 125-150lb range so if you want to hook a monster, they’re here for you.

The inshore bute has been pretty good as well as bait is plentiful and the redfish, trout and snook have been eating them up. Tarpon springs has been giving us a good snook and trout bite and the lower half of Tampa Bay has been producing good numbers of keeper trout and nice sized snook. This is one of the best times of year for catching just about everything. We’ve also caught a few cobia, several spanich mackerel, some jack crevelle and sharks.

If you’re concerned about the oil spill, don’t!. It’s hundreds of miles away from us and hasn’t been moving our way. Our water and beaches are beautiful and the fishing is awesome right now. Book your trip today!

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The bite is on! The fish have finally woke up and they are hungry. We put snook in the boat for the first time last week and several snook from 24-33″ have been brought to the boat. That’s a good thing because we were all kind of worried about this years snook bite after this past winter’s extremely cold weather but they look to be doing just fine.

The two hot tickets this past week were redfish and trout. Both of which have been jumbo sized and a ton of fun. The key has been getting a livewell full of sardine and chumming hard to get the fish excited.

Today I fished the TAMPCO tournament with the CFO of TAMPCO and the Owners of Deep Blue Marine Products Inc. I picked up a few nice sized threadfins and planned on hitting up some sardines on the  the way to our first stop but luckily a buddy hooked me up with plenty of sardines he had found before we departed. So off we went to a spot looking for snook and I asked my guys if they wanted to try to win or if they just wanted to stay close to the boat ramp and have fun. They opted for a chance to win. So we made a 30 minute run to where I had seen some really big redfish a couple of days before and the spot didn’t disappoint us. We boated several over slot redifsh with the biggest ones being, 29.5″, 31″, 31″ and 32.5 inches long and all but one were 10 lbs or more.

Then we headed off to look for our second part of the inshore slam and boated some nice trout with the biggest hitting a huge live threadfin herring and measuring 20″. Once we had that it was off to find the snook to round out the slam and we ran to a spot where we had seen them earlier in the day and pitched baits out and had them blowing up chummers but they just refused to hit a bait with a hook in it.

If it hadn’t been a slam tournament, we probably would have stayed more than an hour on those huge redfish and we could have worn them out but hey, we wanted to win the tournament. We fell just short but it was a lot of fun. I’ll have to visit those big reds some more this week when we can spend some more time with them and get some more pictures.

DON”T FORGET!!! TARPON SEASON IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER! Catching a tarpon is the most exhilarating thing you can do inshore and you don’t want to miss out!!! We’ll start chasing them in May and if you want to get in on the days with the prime tides, don’t hesitate. There will be hundred of 100lb+ fish ready for you to catch in just a few short weeks. Book now! A lot of people have been waiting until the last minute to book a trip with me this year and they’ve missed out because I was already booked. 3 groups this week missed out because they waited until the last minute to try to book and 10 groups have missed out in the past two weeks because they didn’t plan ahead. If you know you want to go fishing with me, don’t put it off. Book as soon as you know the date you want to go. Otherwise you might call and find out someone else planned ahead and took the date you wanted to go.

LET’S GO FISHING!!!!!

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What an awesome last couple of weeks it’s been! The weather has been wonderful and the fish have been cooperating. I’ve run charters out of Tampa Bay, Tarpon Springs and St. Petersburg over the last couple of weeks and the fishing has been great.

In St. Peterburg, the hot bite for the past couple of weeks has been HUGE black drum. They’ve been hanging around in a couple of places from the beach to areas around the Sunshine Skyway bridge. Fish from 20-65lbs have been the norm and they’ve readily eaten life and dead shrimp fished on jig heads as well as gulp shrimp. There are also several schools od large redfish around and if you hit them on the right tide, good action can be had.

Tampa Bay has produced some nice catches of mid slot redfish while the trout bite has changed from the smaller trout we were catching when it was cold to really big trout now that the weather has warmed a bit. We’ve been getting good numbers of upper and over slot trout on shrimp in 2-4 feet of water while fishing potholes.

Tarpon Springs fishing is on fire right now. I mean just about everything is available. The big ticket has been the 40-100 fish catches of super sized trout. The key has been finding sardines to fish with. They’ll eat shrimp here and there but they have absolutely been doing back flips over sardines free lined during any kind of moving tide. Fish from 18-26″ are being caught all day long. Redfish, baby tarpon (7-15lbs), mackerel and even some snook are also available to catch right now.

Big tarpon season is about a month away and if you’re wanting to get in on the action, don’t wait. Book you trip now as people are calling and asking about the best dates (certain dates have much better tides than others) right now and their booking them. If you want to hook a “silver king”, you’re best bet is to call and discuss dates with me as soon as you can.

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Well, what do you say to a client when they are disappointed that the fish are too big to keep? I guess you just keep patting them on the back and telling them that you’re sorry that the fish are too big. You see, here in Florida, we have a slot size limit on speckled sea trout. Fish much been between 15″ and 20″ for the majority of your limit and you can only keep on e fish per person over the slot size limit. Today, like most recent trips, the hard pert is not putting fish in the boat, it’s putting fish in the “box”. This is the time of year where we get big trout. Really big trout. Today we struggled to find fish small enough to fit the slot size. Many of the fish were over slot.

Tarpon Springs and Clearwater are both famous for producing large trout this time of year. And now that the water is warming up, they are chewing the bottom out of the boat on an incoming tide. Shimp, pinfish and sradines (yes I said sardines… they’re around if you know where to look) fished under a popping cork are producing great numbers of really large trout in the Tarpon Springs, St. Joseph Sound and Clearwater areas. Fishing charters in the Tarpon Springs and Clearwater areas have produced 50+ fish days while most fish have been big enough to make it hard to reach our 4 fish per day limit.

Fish grassy areas and rocky areas in 3-6 feet of water with good tidal flow during the incoming tide. The incoming tide has been absolutely essential to get on a good bite and the bite usually lasts about 2 hours. Once the trout bite slows, we’ve headed off in search of redfish and though we’ve found plenty to play with, it’s been a little tough to get them to bite. I think it’s due mostly to us spending the best part of the tide wearing out the trout. Also, it wouldn’t hurt for the water temps to come up another few degrees to really get them turned on. Good news is that 70+ degree temps are forecasted for the foreseeable future so the reds should be turning on soon.

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Finally! Some warm weather today for fishing charters in the Tarpon Springs area! And, the best news is that the weather is forecasted to be warm for the foreseeable future. Not to say that we won’t see any more cold fronts at all but the prospects of 70+ degree days for the next week or more is great news. Even better is that the fish love the warm weather too!

Today I had Joe and Pearl on the boat. They had scheduled a trip with me last year and ended up having to leave town early before we could get out and fish. This year though, we were able to go and it was a good thing that we were. The day started out slow as the tide didn’t move much until around 10:30am but once it did, we were able to pick up a few nice trout and a couple of really nice sheephead in the Palm Harbor area. Our next move was to the Spoil Island in St. Joseph sound so that we could hammer the trout on the incoming tide.   Fishermen were ready, as there were 5-7 boats on each island, but the fish weren’t. I only saw one trout landed while we were out there.

So, we headed to a spot that the trout seem to hang out at when they aren’t at the islands and sure enough, they were there sunning themselves in shallow water. There must have been at least 150 large trout on the flat and we were excited to see that they were willing to eat. We had about 2 dozen shrimp left at this point and we ended using them all on the nice 18-24″ trout.

Trout in the Clearwater, Palm Harbor and Tarpon Springs areas really like the incoming tide this time of year. So if trout is your main target, I would plan your trip around being able to hit your spots around the incoming tide. If you visit the spoil islands and the fish aren’t there, head to shallow water. They seem to wait for water temps to hit 60 degrees before they hit the spoil islands and today was no different. The water temp never got above 58 degrees and those big trout were happy to be sunning themselves in less than two feet of water.

Look for water temps to continue to rise this week but not as fast as it did today. The cloud cover we will have for the next 4 days will slow to water temperature rise but the fishing should still get better with each degree that the water temp ticks up. Redfish are around in good numbers but we didn’t have high enough water today to chase them. Tides next week should be favorable for being able to put more redfish in the boat.

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Well, it’s been a wild winter… weather wise. It’s been tough to get out on the water due to the economy and record breaking cold weather but I finally had the chance to get out the last few days and the prognosis is good. Really good.

I’ve got 5 charters coming up this week and I needed to get out and do some scouting for fish. Two days ago I went out with 20 year professional Tampa Bay area guide veteran and good friend of mine, Capt. Jim Lemke. We never even had to get the boat on plane before he put me on 5 different schools of 100+ redfish. We were out having fun and as such we only brought fly rods with us. The third cast of the day produced a hookup with a nice upper slot redfish but I lost him halfway through the fight. Capt. Jim poled his Maverick HPX boat around for a few more hours showing me some remarkable schools of redfish. We did way more looking than fishing but it was a lot of fun and great to see the redfish schooled up as tight as they were.

Yesterday, I went out with Capt. Greg DeVault of Americana Outdoors TV fame in search of lunker sea trout. We weren’t disappointed. During the low tide we hit cuts and drop-offs in the Tarpon Springs area with great success. Though we did very well on the first of the incoming tide, Capt. Greg and I both knew the bite would be better on the last of the outgoing tide but we’ll have to prove that later this week as the tides become more ideal. Trout in the 17-22″ range all took a liking to the new Mirr-O-Lure offering in soft plastics. The bait is called the Lil’ John. For years, Capt. Greg has been biting the end off of Exude Darts and rigging them with Slayer Inc. jig heads. Now, Mirr-O-Lure has taken his advice and created a bait similar to the Dart but cut one and a half inches off the nose and made the bait flat on that end to fit a jog head more comfortably. One thing I have noticed fishing Mirr-O-Lure new baits is that they are soft but extremely tough. We caught about 20 fish yesterday and Capt. Greg and I only used one bait each all day. That’s awesome if you ask me as most soft plastics seem to only survive one or two fish before having to change baits.

The weather is on a warming trend. That’s good news as we had the coldest January since 1978 here in the Tampa Bay area. The snook have taking a beating because of the frigid temps but the redfish and trout are stronger and hungrier than ever.

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Looking to plan your fishing trip around catching a certain species of fish? Need to know where to stay? Want to know when the best time of year to catch just about everything is? Check out my 2010 Tampa Bay area Fishing Charter Planning Guide. Just about everything you need to know is here!

Tarpon:

When:
Best Bet = May – July
Next Best =  August – September

Where:
St. Petersburg

Bag limit:
Capt. Clay Fishing Charters practices “catch and release” only with tarpon.

Snook:

When:
Best = March – June and October – November
Next best = December

Where:
St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay, New Port Richey, Tarpon Springs

Open Season:
March 1st – April 30th and September 1st – November 30th (note: We are allowed to target snook year ’round but we can only keep them for dinner during “open season”)

Bag limit:
1 per person per day. Fish must be no less than 28″ long or more than 33″ long.

Redfish:

When:
Best Bet = February – June and October-December
Next Best = The rest of the year.

Where:
St. Petersburg, Tarpon Springs, New Port Richey and Tampa Bay

Open Season:
Year ’round

Bag Limit:
1 per person. No less than 18″ long or more than 27″ long

Spotted Sea Trout:

When:
Best Bet = January – March
Next Best = The rest of the year

Where:
Tarpon Springs, Clearwater, New Port Richey, Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg

Open Season:
South Region (South of Tarpon Springs, including Tampa Bay) Jan-October
North Region (Tarpon Springs North) March – January

Bag Limit:
South Region = 4 per person per day. No less than 15″ long and no more than 20″ long (one per person may be over 20″)
North Region = 5 per person per day. No less than 15″ long and no more than 20″ long (one per person may be over 20″)

Best of the rest.

Mangrove Snapper: Best Bet = May – September

Spanish Mackerel: Best Bet = March – November

Cobia: Best Bet = March – October

Grouper (inshore): Best Bet = November – March (call for current regulations on harvetsing)

Jack Crevelle: Best Bet = All Year

Sharks: Best Bet = April – November

Where to stay.

Tampa Area: Embassy Suites Tampa Airport (Special rates for my customers, call me for details)

St. Petersburg: Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort Marina Cove (within 1 mile of pickup location for all St. Pete charters)

Tarpon Springs and New Port Richey: Hampton Inn

Included in your charter.

• Use of rods, reels, tackle
• Live bait (available 99% of the time)
• Use of cooler with ice
• Cleaned and bagged fish
• Fishing Licenses
• Photos of your catch (emailed to you after charter)

You should consider bringing.

• Sunglasses
• Check the weather and wear warmer cloths that you think you’ll need. You can always peel off a layer or two if you get warm.
• Sunscreen
• Hat
• Cooler (for the car, not the boat) to take you catch home with you.

When you should book you trip.

As soon as you know the date(s) you would like to book, don’t hesitate, book them. Many of my repeat clients use my online reservation system and they book dates  months in advance. Don’t procrastinate and miss out on the only date you could go.

How you should book a trip.

Call me for current rates and specials and then place you reservation by phone or by using my online reservation system. Click Here

Other Useful Links (Updated Periodically)

Florida Saltwater Fishing Regulations (.pdf)

Tampa Bay Area Tide Predictions

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