Manatee River, Tera Ceia Bay, Tampa Bay

August 4th, 2008

Tampa Bay's redfishing at its best!

The weather has slowed us down a bit over the past couple of weeks, but despite having to dodge the summertime rainstorms, we’ve managed to get on the water everyday and catch fish. If the thunder and lightning got to bad, we just took a short lunch break or fished under a bridge. The weather just can’t keep a good fisherman down… one way or another he’ll find a way to fish. We fished last week and caught some great fish!

Whether you prefer to catch big tarpon on small tarpon, there are more than enough of them still around. The big fish were tough to catch at times, but we dedicated some time into catching them, and we managed to hook a few. The smaller tarpon that have shown up in the Bay have been loads of fun to catch. By small tarpon, we are talking about fish that are 25 pounds to 50 pounds. The big fish are mostly mixed in with the smaller fish, but they haven’t been biting as good as the smaller ones. We did hook 7 to 8 big tarpon in approximately 1 hour one day last week. What a great day!

With the right tide, snook fishing has been on fire. Most of the snook we have caught are junior snook that are approximately 20 inches to 26 inches long. Catching that size fish on light tackle is loads of fun. Every time the bait hits the water it’s SNOOK ON! Much like the tarpon, there is big snook and smaller ones, but it’s the smaller ones that usually get to the bait first. Over the next few months snook fishing will change and the bigger fish will start to show up.

While fishing for shark, we caught the biggest stingray that I’ve ever seen. This stingray was about 8 feet across. My mind certainly couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing, and to top that, we also landed a 13 foot to 14 foot shark the same day.

The redfish are still around and are actually getting bigger and more plentiful. We have certainly caught our share of great redfish this summer, and fall redfishing should be even better. Check out the 38 inch bull redfish in the picture. Don’t you want to catch one?