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Tampa Bay - South Shore
Capt. Fred Everson
April 28, 2005
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report
That should do it for cold fronts this spring. If not, it’s time to head further south. Weather aside, fishing was quite good last week – sometimes. I had two trips – one was a bust, and the other nearly so. The first four hours of my day on Monday were dreadfully slow. It started out well, by having nice sized baits on the first mark. After four or five tosses of the net, I had enough bait to fish with, with only a few threadfins in the mix. My clients were looking to catch snook, and the big baits were perfect for that, however there were hardly enough to chum with.
It didn’t take long to find snook. Poling in clear shallow water on the flats south of Cockroach Bay I found a big pod of snook on the first stop. With a cold front on its way, I guessed the bite would be on, but that wasn’t the case at 10 in the morning. The baits went crazy soon as I cast them out, but the snook simply weren’t interested. I chummed the few threadfins I had, but the snook never popped any of those baits either. I worked those fish for half an hour and then started to look for fresh meat.
The next couple of stops produced only one short snook and a couple of very tentative strikes. It was looking pretty grim. I decided to try a mackerel spot just off the flats and spent about 20 minutes before the wind and the waves forced us back inshore. By then it was blowing hard out of the southeast and threatening to rain. It was time to go back inshore.
I spotted a few snook on the mangrove shoreline at the first stop, but didn’t draw a strike. Then I made my way deeper into the backcountry to get out of the wind. I set up on a little creek mouth, and finally hooked up with a redfish that was just short. Ten minutes later, I heard swish followed by a sizzling drag. Another redfish, and this one was in the middle of the slot. Things were looking up. A few minutes later we hooked up again, another red and this one was closer to the top of the slot.
Then there was a lull, and we were running out of time. The southeast horizon was clouding over and the wind was picking up. I eased the skiff around the next point to try one more hole – a deeper cut along some mangroves with the wind at our back. I laid a bait under a float into a deep cut, and soon as I handed the rod off, it was down. We missed that fish, and quite a few more. But we did land a couple of shorts and got broke off four or five times by snook that just wouldn’t come to heel.
Water temperature is coming up, but it was still in the low seventies last time I checked. The snook bite should really turn on when it gets above 75 degrees, and that will probably coincide with the season closure on Sunday. No problem here. It’s time that anglers stopped looking at snook in terms of filets. Fishing pressure on this species from guides and recreational anglers alike is incredible, and it’s about to get a lot worse. Just take a look at the construction going on in Ruskin.
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