Manatee River, Tera Ceia Bay, Tampa Bay

May 23rd, 2008 

Big fish on in Tampa bay!

Plenty of fish are around, and if the time is right, they will almost jump in the boat! Fishing has been great over the past week, whether it’s been for tarpon, snook, redfish, trout, grouper, sharks, or others. However, the weather hasn’t been as good. The wind has been blowing on average 15 mph to 20mph daily, but regardless of what Mother Nature throws our way, we’ve been able to get on a great bite and catch some great fish.

Let’s talk about tarpon! I have never seen so many sharks and sharks that are so aggressive in this area until recently. Tarpon fishing was excellent last week, but the sharks pose a huge problem. We don’t want tarpon to become shark bait. Every fish we hooked in the Bay was eventually chased by a shark. By the way, these sharks are some of the biggest sharks I have ever seen in the Bay. I have yet to have a tarpon eaten by the sharks, but they have attacked the line or run in to the line, breaking the tarpon off. In my opinion, that is a good thing because I don’t want to see any tarpon get hurt.

Last week we hooked a tarpon on 80 lb braided line and fought it for roughly 2 hours. We never saw the fish the entire 2 hours that we fought it, and the fish managed to break us off after the awesome fight. After we lost the fish, we went back to our anchor and tied back up to try another round. Two minutes later we hooked another fish that did the same exact thing. I have never seen a fish stay on the bottom when you put as much pressure on it as we were. It had to be a shark. I now have a rod on the boat that has 200 lb test fishing line on it so I’m ready for the next fight.

The trout, snook, and redfish bite has been great. We haven’t had any trouble getting any of these fish to bite. The biggest factor in this type of fishing lately is getting in and out of the wind. Most of the trout have been out off the grass edges where you can’t get out of the wind, but the bite has still been great. The snook and redfish have been hiding in the coves, which is out of the wind mostly.

The grouper bite has been awesome lately. We are usually fishing for tarpon when we’ve caught grouper. Every time you put your bait in the water you hook up and that is fun. Grouper hit really hard and try to get you down in the rocks before you get a chance to do much. Sometimes it is neat to fish and not know what your next catch is going to be. Please visit www. castawaychartersinc.com and book your trip today!

Capt. TJ Stewart
Castaway Charters, Inc.
5616 41 Ave. East
Bradenton, FL 34208
Phone: 941-737-5985
Email: CaptainTJStewart@yahoo.com
Website: http://castawaychartersinc.com/