Tampa Bay Fishing Report

Capt. TJ Stewart
September 7, 2006
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report

The perfect size!

Well here we are with another great week of fishing. Well it’s been a little slow not the fishing! Just the people who are wanting to go. I think everyone is waiting for it to cool back down. witch is not a bad idea but then I or some of the other captains get so busy that we can’t take you fishing. To say no more you might want to start planing those trips so you can go catch the big one.

One of the big things that everyone is worried about is the Red tide. But so you know it has not been as bad as last year was. Of course any red tide is not good but this red tide has been off the beaches around Longboat and to the south most all of the beaches and around the passes hopefully it will stay there or even better just go away. But to say no more it has not been up in the bay to effect the bay fishing at all.

I will start with the Red fish these fish have started to show up a little better or let me say they are starting to feed better. Most of the trips here lately we have been able to catch some pretty good numbers of Red fish. Most of the fish that we have catching have been in the slot. Meaning that these fish are 18-27 inches but you know that you get that big one that just puts up even a harder fight on the light tackle. Over the past couple of weeks it seems like more an more fish have shown up which is a really good thing.

The little Tarpon man what fun these fish have been. There are still a lot of smaller Tarpon up in the river. If you play with them just right you can have some fun like this young man did. Most of these fish have been ranging 10-40 lbs and on the light tackle it is a blast. These great Silver Kings have been fun this summer all of the fish that we have been catching have been on spinning rods. This is awesome but we also did manage to hook one on a fly rod the other day, it was not there too long but after 3 jumps he managed to throw the hook from his mouth but it was fun for a few minutes. As you can see in the picture if you’re a young man about his size this was a perfect Tarpon for him and he had some fun getting this fish to the boat.

This brings us to the Snook fishing. We have not missed a lick with these fish. We have been able to catch a good number of these fish each trip. This has been some of the best Snook fishing that I have seen over a long period of time in the last couple of years. The season is back to where you can now keep these great fish. The size limit did go up a little its now 27-34 inches. But even if there not quite that big they are a lot of fun to catch an release.

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