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Early Fall Fishing off of Clearwater Pass

PostPosted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 11:05 am
by fish4life2010
This weekend we fished our 23' bay boat on the adjacent near shore reefs to clearwater beach. With flat seas and cool temps, the bait was easy to spot and and prized for a loaded bait well of greenbacks and pinfish with hardly any time wasted. After filling the live well we ran 2-5 miles off of clearwater pass and had a variety of lines in the water... a couple of light tackle flat lines loaded with greenbacks and we also had some heavy tackle sitting on the bottom looking for those fall shallow water groupers. With water temps that morning around 77-78 degrees our chances of solid hook-ups were bound in no time. With consistant chumming of cut greenbacks and frozen sardines, the flashy chumslick quickly lured in several predator fish.

With the first pinfish sent down to the bottom, quickly the rod dumped over and my father had a 15lb cobia relentlessly pulling on the other end..... as the fish came boatside, 3 other curious cobias followed! As i hurried to grab another rod rigged with a 3/0 cir. hook and a pinfish, our back two flatlines took off SCREAMING at the very same some moment.!! Talk about chaos!! We quickly gaffed the cobia on the one line and battled in out flatlines, which turned out to be two huge 25lb-30lb cudas!

After a quick lunch, and more chumming we yet let out two more flatlines rigged the same way and within 3 mins my spinning combo quickly took off!! With runs consistant to kingfish, i was real careful fighting him in while constantly backing on and off the drag as the fish ran. As we got it close to boat, we got the first look at it and it turned out to be a pretty large, energetic bonita. With no warning, the chum slick i had going all afternoon caused a couple of very large cudas to stay boat side all day, picking off our catches.... with no furthur, they shear cutted the bonita from the gill plates down in one swipe!!! It is quite amazing just how sharp their furious teeth are!

IT proved to be an exciting day, but the best part is that it will only get better as the temps countinue to drop over the next few cold fronts that start to pass through the tampa area!! Until next time, get out there and enjoy like we did what mother nature provided us in the greater clearwater area!
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