Tampa Bay Fishing Report

Capt. TJ Stewart
May 6, 2004
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report

The beginning of this week was really windy, but as the week went on the wind let up a little and let us get some fishing in. The Trout fishing this week was hot. We had a couple of days this week where we caught over 30-40 Trout with some really nice trout. We had one fish that was 26-1/2 inches long, and about 6 pounds.

We had some really good high tides this week. These tides push the Redfish further up on the shore line and make them easier to see and easier to catch. We caught a lot of fish this week within the slot limit which is 18-27 inches. The Redfish of the week was a 27-1/2 inch fish just over the limit.

Snook season is over but that doesn’t mean that you can’t go catch and release the Snook. Snook season ended with a bang! We had some days that we caught well over 20 fish. The snook of the week was a 29-inch Snook that put up one heck of a fight. We had to work this fish out of the mangroves, but the young man that caught Snook managed to win the battle!

The last Two days of the week we changed it up a little. I fished a kingfish Tournament with some of my clients. The first day we made it into 2nd place in the under 23 foot boat class, but we couldn’t hold on to it the second day. We caught a lot of fish and the wining fish was caught less than a 100 yards away from our boat, but we just couldn’t get the big one in. Each day we caught over 15 fish most off these fish over 10 lbs but we just couldn’t get over 14-1/5 lbs.

I didn’t forget the Tarpon! These fish are really moving into the bay now. We saw a lot of Tarpon the last day I fished and we jumped well over 10 Tarpon. We boated 4 of these fish with a 100 lb fish being the Tarpon of the week.. We leadered a few bigger fish but we didn’t managed to get the fish in the boat for a picture. Well the fishing has been excellent! Hope to see you soon!

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