Southshore Tampa Bay
Capt. Fred Everson
March 10, 2008
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report
It's a good thing to pay close attention to the weather forecast, and sometimes it's even better to ignore it. Tuesday and Wednesday were supposed to be windy cold and wet, but turned out to be perfect fishing days.
On Tuesday, I awoke to a dead flat calm – a perfect day to hunt for cobia on the flats. On my last trip we saw a dozen or more big eagle rays cruising the flats south of Apollo Beach in three feet of water. Only one ray had a cobia on it, and we caught that fish, but it was short of the 33 inch minimum.
In the 15 minutes it took to get from the mouth of the Little Manatee River to Apollo Beach it had clouded over and the wind had picked up a bit. After cruising around for half an hour and seeing only two rays, I decided to take the boat as shallow as it would go to look for redfish. Ten minutes later I saw some fish darting away from the boat and cast a Rip Tide soft plastic mullet at them and hooked a seven and a half pound redfish. I put the Power Pole down and cast to a second fish less than a minute after landing the red. This one turned out to be a 28 inch snook, and it hit the same plastic mullet that caught the redfish.
Capt. Mark Thomas fished the same day between Cockroach Bay and Piney Point and said that the redfish and snook about chewed the bottom out of the boat. He said the bait was so plentiful at the Skyway he gave four scoops away to other captains, and still had to cull some out of the livewells.
Capt. Marc Noe of Apollo Beach said he caught some big jacks and a pompano at the Big Bend Power plant on live shrimp. The next day he fished Bishop Harbor with whitebait and caught snook and trout, freelining some baits and fishing others under floats.
The wind started to blow again on Thursday afternoon and kept most of us off the water through Saturday.
You can visit the captain's website at Tampabayfishingguide.com for charter info, or phone him at 813 830 8890.
Tampa Bay Fishing Forecast:
It looks like the wind is going to lay down mid week, so I will be looking for cobia if water clarity comes back up. It was awful murky in the Little Manatee River yesterday due to all the rain we had Friday night.
Target Species:
Cobia, redfish, snook
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