Tampa Bay Fishing Report

Capt. TJ Stewart
September 12, 2004
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report

If it flies or swims!

Once again we owe another slow week to the hurricanes. When I say slow I just mean the business or customers to go fishing. The fishing is great we have not had a chance to do any Tarpon fishing but the Snook and Red fish are going crazy. The Tarpon are still here. I have seen a lot of Silver Kings while catching bait they have been rolling and feeding on the surface.

If it’s Red fish you want to catch we were catching them. Almost all of the Red fish are keepers most of the fish are 20-26 inches. We only got a few days of fishing in but each day we had our share of Red fish. Each day we caught over 25 Red fish. The Red fish of the week was a 28 inch fish.

The Snook bite has gotten a lot better. This is the second week of Snook season but we have not had a chance to do too much Snook fishing. All of the Snook fishing we have done is in the same area where we are catching our Red fish. What we have been doing is chumming the fish up in the white holes and watching the fish hit and throwing to the biggest hit or the hurt that you want to catch.. It is almost like fishing in a bowl. A white hole is an area of sand surrounded by a lot of grass. The fish sit in the hole and wait for the baits to come from the grass to the hole with the moving tide. Each day we fished we caught over 20 Snook. The number is going back up again. The Snook of the week was a 28 inch Snook. We did manage to catch a few keeper Snook this week so the bite has increased.

Then we have the catch of the week as you can see in the photo it’s a sea gull. But don’t worry no birds got hurt in this catch. Unfortunately some times these birds get the bait before the fish can get to the bait.

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