Tampa Bay Fishing Report

Capt. TJ Stewart
January 18, 2005
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report

A little Lady!

Well this is more like the weather that we usually have in January. I ‘m not going to complain too much because the last couple of weeks the weather has been awesome. But we started to get use to how nice it was and then the cold came back. This is going to change the fishing a little again.

Let’s start with the Trout fishing. It has its days .One day you have no trouble catching a bunch of Trout good size, then two days later you have to work to catch a few. I know a little bit has to do with the tides. On the lower tides we have had a lot more luck. With the colder water it is going to change the Trout fishing a little bit.We will have to start fishing with shrimp or artificial bait. The reason is because with the colder water the fish usually slow down so they won’t chase the shiners.

We did some thing a little different last week and caught some different fish. We started by doing some fly fishing. This at times can be really tough to catch fish. We started by trying to catch some Red fish and Trout. We did not have much luck so we decided to fish in a little warmer water. We had a lot more luck, we caught a lot of Poor man’s Tarpon otherwise known as Lady fish and a few Jacks. Let me tell you the gentlemen had a lot of fun with the Fly rod just about every time he got the fly out he had a bite. Another thing that was a little different, we caught a lot of Mangrove Snapper up in the river and they were really nice size.

Then we have the Offshore fishing and we have still been having a lot of luck. If we are not catching Grouper every time you drop we are pulling up Gray Snapper or at least getting some real good bites. With the cooler weather the water temp offshore will go down but this will not hurt the fishing out there. If any thing it will be better. We just need the wind to calm down a little so that we can get back out there.

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