Tampa Bay, Tarpon Springs, Clearwater & St. Petersburg

Capt. Clay Eavenson
October 30, 2007
Tarpon Springs - Saltwater Fishing Report

I had a great game plan set out for my Clearwater fishing charter with John Sr., John Jr., and Gabe today. But, just like many of my plans as of late this one had to be changed midstream. First off we had a lot of rain yesterday and I was afraid that bait would be hard to come by. I even talked with another well known guide at the ramp and he too was lamenting the hunt for bait prior to his charter today. Luckily, I pulled out of the boat ramp and hadn't made it 1/2mile down the ICW before I saw a ton of pelicans diving. I know that could only mean one thing, bait! I guess the rain hadn't messed up the bait situation after all. So I pulled over and in less than 10 minutes I had blacked out the well.

Well, I went back to the dock to find that my clients were already there waiting for me, early. Which is MUCH better than them being late. They let me take a few minutes to clean the boat off a little and then off we went to pursue the plan that would not be. On the agenda was to hit up three barrier islands on the west side of the intercoastal waterway, working our way from North to South back towards the boat ramp. The first spot has been my most productive in the area for the past month or so but when we got there, things just didn't look right to me. The mullet weren't as thick as they had been when we were doing well on redfish there. We did catch a few trout and a ton of small grouper but that was it. This is when we switched gears. Instead of hitting the other two barrier islands in succession, I decided to go hit a spot near the mainland. Good decision (pat myself on back, lol). After about 5 minutes on the trolling motor we started seeing the unmistakable wakes of redfish.

I put the Power Pole down and began throwing some greenbacks out as chummers. It wasn't long before the chummers were getting crushed, and then shortly after, the rods were getting bent. The bite lasted just a little over an hour and we managed 15-20 redfish in that time. One thing we all noticed was that the redfish seemed to really key in on the small pinfish over the greenbacks. Though we got bites on both baits the pinfish were much more successful.

After the bite died down we decided to catch the tail end of the original plan and hit the last of the three barrier islands. It was slow at this last spot but we did hook two big snook that got away and landed two more redfish to finish of the trip.

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