Tampa Bay Fishing Report

Capt. TJ Stewart
January 10, 2005
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report

Even Octopus!

Well, what month is it? That’s right it’s Jan. Yes that’s right it is Jan even though it feels like Spring. We could not ask for much better weather. The last two weeks have been almost too nice with just about no wind.

The nice weather has allowed us to get offshore and do some fishing. We have fished a few trips offshore and had a lot of luck. Most of the fishing that we have been doing has been within 10 miles of shore. Which with the nice weather it’s just a short boat ride and you are fishing. Lets get back to the fishing, it has been good. We have been catching a lot of Grouper and Snapper. Most of the fishing we’ve been doing we have started with dead bait, then if the fishing slowed down we would go to live bait. We caught a lot of nice fish and the Grouper of the week was a 25 inch fish. That put up a great fight! Then we have the Snapper most of these fish were 1-2 lbs ,12-18 inches.

We did catch a few other species of fish some good, some real strange. We did catch a few real nice Sea Bass each trip and these are just about one of the best eating fish that swims in the sea. Well that is how I feel anyway. One of the unique things that we caught was Octopus and most days we caught more then one. But I did learn that they are good bait. I can tell you that they are strange to put on the hook but we did catch a lot of Grouper and Snapper with it.

Then lets not forget the back water fishing. The Red fish have been a little slow but we have been able to catch a few. But most of the action has been with the Trout fishing. We had a couple of trips where we caught a mess of Trout. With the warmer water we have started using live bait shiners again.

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