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Tampa Bay - South Shore
Capt. Fred Everson
November 20, 2002
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report
Southshore Tampa Bay Fishing Report for November 19
Winter came upon us with a torrent of rain last Saturday. The annual Chuck Lamar Celebrity tournament out of St. Petersburg was virtually a wash. It rained hard all day Saturday, and then it blew hard all day Sunday. I kept the bait shop open half a day on Saturday, and only for a couple of hours on Sunday, and I doubt that anybody missed me. This was a good weekend to pursue other hobbies, and I stayed home and baked a couple of pies.
The only fish I saw were caught by Mike Pierce and Ed Childers. They jacked a 24 inch gag grouper out of the Little Manatee River, and a couple of keeper snook. One at 32 inches, the other at 30 – pretty good considering the awful conditions.
The approach of the full moon on the 20th caused extreme low tides in the early morning hours, which were exacerbated by a strong north wind. As a result, the local fishing the past two days basically sucked.
I was running the camera boat for Mark Sosin today, who was fishing with Capt. Chet Jennings. We looked for cobia outside the hot water outflow in Apollo Beach, but the big ling just weren’t there. I did have a report of hundreds of cobia stacked up inside the barrels at the inlet to the power plant, and after what I saw today, it was sure believable. They can’t stay there forever, though, and if the weather warms a bit and the wind lays down, they could come out onto the flats.
The recent inclement weather pushed the pilchards into parts unknown, but I expect that the bait situation will improve in direct proportion to better weather. With water temperature in the gulf already below 70 degrees, I expect the cobia and the whitebait to be inside the bay all winter.
Look for a couple of warm days and a little less wind for the hot bite of a week ago to return.
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