Tampa Bay Fishing Report

Capt. TJ Stewart
September 20, 2004
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report

Taking drag what is it!

While I hope these storms will keep making these little turns avoiding us I am sorry for the people these storms have been hitting. Well the weather hasn’t been real good but the fishing has been great. The morning bite has been the best and a big part of that is the tides. This week we had a good low outgoing tide first thing in the morning and the fish were feeding real good.

We started one of the mornings out Tarpon fishing, well we made an attempt but we could not catch any bait to speak of. The bait was real nice bait for the Snook and Red fish but a little small for the Tarpon. We did manage to get a few big baits but it was a little late in the morning. We went and gave it a try and hooked one Tarpon as soon as we got there. This was the only Tarpon we hooked. We caught a few Grouper and Mackerel and saw a few more Tarpon roll. We are going to try some different locations for the bait so I will see if we can have a better Tarpon report for next week. One of the fish that we did catch this week was Jack crevalle we caught a few while Snook fishing. These fish are great they put up a heck of a fight. The one shown in the photo we had to pull the anchor and chase the fish.

The Snook bite was great this week. The water temp has dropped down a little the Snook like this. It usually makes them feed better. There is a lot of Snook around and when you get the right conditions you can catch a good number of Snook. Most of the days that we fished this week we caught over 20 Snook each trip some trips a lot more. It seemed like one day we would catch more Snook than Red fish and the next it would be the opposite . No complaints each day we caught a number of fish. The Snook of the week was a 26 ½ inch Snook. That one we had to fight out of the mangroves but we did succeed. .

The Red fish bite was just as good sometimes a little better. Most of these ranged between 20-25 inches. We did manage to get on a few big schools of Red fish that ranged bigger. Most of these fish were 25-31 inches. The Red fish of the week was a 31 inch Red fish.

We did have one experience that was a little different. We started one of the mornings off Snook fishing but the tide was not exactly right. We did manage to catch a few Mangrove snapper and one goliath Grouper that was a good fight on the light tackle.

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