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Tampa Bay Fishing Report
Capt. TJ Stewart
August 15, 2004
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report
Close call!
Back home to the great Tampa Bay. It was nice to have a little change of fishing areas because it reminds me of how lucky I am to live and fish in the Tampa Bay water ways. The fishing down in the Keys is different but similar as far as the backwater fishing goes. They have a lot of the same species that we fish for here. One big difference is the offshore fishing you don’t have to go quite as far to get to deeper water.
Well I guess most of the guys didn’t get to fish last week because of all the rain, we must have got a lot because the Bay changed colors. The rain makes the water a lot darker. With all of the fresh water the fish move around but they will still eat, you just have to fish in different areas. The Snook bite was pretty good this week We had two different days that we caught over 12 fish. We found that the Snook were acting strange this week, they wouldn’t eat a live bait but if you threw a dead bait into the hole and just let it sit they would pick it up real slow. The Snook of the week was a 26 inch fish.
The Redfish bite this week was good but most of the fish were a little smaller then they had been averaging. The fish ranged from 18-24 inches making them big enough to keep and a lot of fun to catch on light tackle. The Redfish of the week was a 28 inch fish.
The last few weeks we have been catching a few Mangrove Snapper on the flats which is unusual. They are fairly nice fish, most of them have been keepers 12-16 inches which are good sized Snapper for the bay. Also most of the reefs just offshore have been holding a lot of Mackerel, and even some of the rock piles back in the Bay have a lot of Mackerel on them .We caught a 5 lb Mackerel about 30 inches it was a nice fish.
Well hopefully the weather will be a little better next week and we will be able to get out a few more days. That’s if the other hurricane that is out in the Gulf will leave us alone. It was a really close call with hurricane Charley that came through last week. Charley was coming straight toward Tampa Bay but ended up hitting Florida a little further South. Unfortunately doing a lot of damage to those it hit. I give my best wishes to the people South of us. This week we are going to do some Tarpon fishing, so we’ll let you know how the Tarpon bite is.
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