Nice Tarpon Springs Redfish!
Tarpon Springs is a great place to catch redfish.

10-28-2007 - The Glass Half Full

I should title this fishing report, "The Bay Half Full". The funny thing is that yesterday I expected today's report to be titled, "The Bay Half Empty". If these metaphors are just too deep for you, I'll lay it out in plain english. There was no water in the Bay for most of this morning. I had been watching the weather forecasts for a few days prior to this trip and measuring it against the tide charts. The combination of high winds out of the North East (flushes water out of the Bay) and a negative low tide didn't have me excited, to say the least. I called both my charters for today yesterday afternoon and expressed my concerns for today's trips. One group decided to reschedule while the other group, Mike, Mike, Mike, and Don said that today would be their only chance to go and one of the Mikes said that we should just go for it and make the best of the weather situation we have. I'm glad we did. Today ended up being a "Glass Half Full" day as opposed to it's negative counterpart.

 

I got bait pretty easily less than 1/10 of a mile from the boat ramp and then went to pick up Mike, Mike, Mike, and Don. When we left the ramp, the Bay was as I expected. Low water, high winds, and choppy. 90% of the spots I like to fish were completely dry or inaccessible due to the low water. We started the day out by  fishing deep cuts near the mouths of a nearby river and managed a few small snook. After that we headed over to some docks that had some sailboats on them and pitched baits under the sailboats. We managed one hook up on a huge fish but ended up getting broke off. From there I tried to work my way up the river only to find that all of my other spots in there were inaccessible. We decided to brave the choppy water and head out to the outside bar on the South shore of Tampa Bay to try our hand at some trout. They were there for sure. Our first bite at this spot was also our biggest trout of the day at almost 20". We proceeded to catch another 20 or so trout and kept one more for dinner.

 

It's just a reminder to me that you can't catch fish if you don't go fishing. I'm glad that Mike saw the glass half full and pulled the trigger on a good fishing trip. It wasn't as good as it could have been had we had ideal conditions but we caught almost 30 fish today so I'll Take it.

 

Thanks for going fishing with me guys! I had a great time meeting you.

 

 

 

 

10-25-2007 - A very red day.

 

I had a great game plan set out for my Clearwater fishing charter with John Sr., John Jr., and Gabe today. But, just like many of my plans as of late this one had to be changed midstream. First off we had a lot of rain yesterday and I was afraid that bait would be hard to come by. I even talked with another well known guide at the ramp and he too was lamenting the hunt for bait prior to his charter today. Luckily, I pulled out of the boat ramp and hadn't made it 1/2mile down the ICW before I saw a ton of pelicans diving. I know that could only mean one thing, bait! I guess the rain hadn't messed up the bait situation after all. So I pulled over and in less than 10 minutes I had blacked out the well.

Well, I went back to the dock to find that my clients were already there waiting for me, early. Which is MUCH better than them being late. They let me take a few minutes to clean the boat off a little and then off we went to pursue the plan that would not be. On the agenda was to hit up three barrier islands on the west side of the intercoastal waterway, working our way from North to South back towards the boat ramp. The first spot has been my most productive in the area for the past month or so but when we got there, things just didn't look right to me. The mullet weren't as thick as they had been when we were doing well on redfish there. We did catch a few trout and a ton of small grouper but that was it. This is when we switched gears. Instead of hitting the other two barrier islands in succession, I decided to go hit a spot near the mainland. Good decision (pat myself on back, lol).
After about 5 minutes on the trolling motor we started seeing the unmistakable wakes of redfish.

 

I put the Power Pole down and began throwing some greenbacks out as chummers. It wasn't long before the chummers were getting crushed, and then shortly after, the rods were getting bent. The bite lasted just a little over an hour and we managed 15-20 redfish in that time. One thing we all noticed was that the redfish seemed to really key in on the small pinfish over the greenbacks. Though we got bites on both baits the pinfish were much more successful.

After the bite died down we decided to catch the tail end of the original plan and hit the last of the three barrier islands. It was slow at this last spot but we did hook two big snook that got away and landed two more redfish to finish of the trip.

 

 

 

Click here for the Fishing Report Archive.

 

Phone: 813.300.2147
Email: GoFishing@CaptainClay.com