Calm Days Ahead -- Probably in July
Capt. Fred Everson
May 30, 2008
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report
The wind continued to blow throughout much of the month making it very tough to get out in anything but an offshore boat. Every year the winds of March seem to extend deeper into spring, and blow a little harder. I guess we will have a dead flat calm day sometime in July.
Catch and release action on snook should begin at the Spoil Island this month off Port Manatee, but you need a permit to fish there now. Capt. Tom Rinehart and I passed by on our way to Joe Island on Friday and nobody was fishing there but the tide was incoming and it was windy. A strong falling tide on the new or full moon is best at the tip of the island.
We decided to run south after having no luck on redfish in Little Cockroach Bay, The back side of Joe Island is usually a safe bet for redfish with cut bait on Rip Tide jig heads at high tide, but that didn't pan out either. It was a long bumpy ride for naught.
A few days earlier I got out with James Johnigan of Plant City and we had better luck. We caught a few trout on Mirrolure's 52 MS off Pinellas Point, then hooked up with some schoolie mackerel on chrome spoons in the middle of the bay. They were feeding on glass minnows around the ship's channel. A funny thing worth mentioning was we were using two rods, identical in every respect, rigged with the same chrome spoons. One rod caught all the fish while the other never had a bump. One spoon was rigged with a split ring and a barrel swivel, and the other tied directly to the leader. That was the only difference I could see, but you can bet I'll be taking the swivel and the split rings off the rest of my mackerel spoons.
Capt. Chet Jennings told me that the fishing on the Southshore was tough last week. He said he found a few redfish, but the snook bite was very slow. He did catch a keeper sized cobia off the mouth of the Little Manatee River, where he saw a pair of fish swimming along with a bull shark. Usually when cobia are paired up like that the smaller fish beats the big one to the bait, but this time the bigger fish got there first.
Traffic on Tampa Bay will be down through the first week in July as many of the local guides are off to join the Conga Line at Boca Grande. Tarpon are the main attraction as they stack up in the pass for a couple of months each year, but you have to like fishing with a crowd to get at them. Locally, there are some tarpon around, but you need calm conditions to see them, and we haven't had many such days this year.
Tampa Bay Fishing Forecast:
Great wade fishing tides for the next three or four evenings. I like a minus low tide around sunset for tailing redfish.
Target Species:
Redfish Trout Snook Spanish Mackerel Cobia
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