Tampa Bay, Tarpon Springs, Clearwater & St. Petersburg

July 2nd, 2008

Getting the kids hooked up!

It was hard to tell who the grownups were this past week. Everybody that got hooked up with a big fish on a Tarpon Springs or Tampa fishing charter this week had a grin from ear to ear. Redfish was the fish of the week with a few nice snook thrown in for good measure.

Mathew was in town with his parents Steven and Tara and they were patient with me as it took some time to find the redfish I had seen a few days before. Once we found them it was game on. They were hanging out on a grass flat near the beach and these guys were big. We pulled out fish from 24"-35". The bite was great but slowed when dolphins showed up looking for the same game we were there for. But the bite shut off completely when an inconsiderate boater drove right over the fish. Oh well, at least we pulled in a dozen or so big redfish before the party crashers arrived.

Then I met up with Doug and his son Billy. The plan was to get a late start to catch the outgoing tide for big snook on the beach in Tarpon Springs. The tide wasn't going to start leaving until about an hour into the charter so I decided on checking in on a spot that was on fire about 3 weeks ago but had slowed down over the past two weeks. When we arrived Doug made mention of all of the mullet that were there and I knew that was a good sign. But, the last three times I had checked on the spot the fish we were looking for hadn't been there so my optimism was held off by my skepticism. Either way, I decided to give it a little while because the tides were right for it. We used the PowerPole to stake out and I threw out some chummers and Doug and Billy threw out some baits with hooks in them. 10 minutes went by and no action. We moved down the shoreline about 75 yards and repeated the procedure. This time the water erupted. The "chummers" (baitfish I throw out wounded without hooks) were getting crushed. The first bait that hit the water was jumped on by a nice redfish and for the next 2 hours it was double hookup after double hookup. We managed somewhere between 40 and 50 redfish and 2 nice snook before the water left to the point where we needed to leave. We then headed to the beach to look for some monster snook and we saw a few and hooked two pigs but it just wasn't meant to be. Both fish spit the hook.

Then the "kids at heart" hooked up with me in St. Pete. It was a business trip for them but you couldn't tell. They were just excited to be on the water and away from their cell phones. The bite was slow but we went quality over quantity with redfish to 33" boated.

About a week and a half ago the bite got weird and really slowed down. I'm beginning to think it was do to the lack of rain. But now that we are having these afternoon showers the bite is really starting to pick up. Hopefully we'll stay in this typical summertime pattern of sunny skies through the first half of the day and rain in the afternoon. It keeps the salinity levels right for the fish and the water from getting too hot.