Tampa Bay Fishing Report

Capt. TJ Stewart
February 16, 2007
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report

One of the biggest!

Burr! it has definitely decided to cool down a little. This is Florida come on now. Well spring is just around the corner. I’m ready for it,I don’t know about you. Well I have had a lot of phone calls setting up trips so you guys must be with me and you are ready for that Spring weather. This weather is going to change things a little as it has over the past couple of weeks.

We did get to stick our heads out for a rough day of offshore fishing. Well it was rough getting out but there but the fishing was great. With it being cold we were using all dead cut bait but the fish were biting it. We managed to catch a few nice Grouper with a mess of little ones but they were a lot of fun anyway. I say small most of the fish that were caught were over 18 inches so they put up a great fight. Well with the weather the water temp is going to drop big time so that means that the Grouper should get pushed back in closer. So if you have any plans to do some off shore fishing it would be a good time to do it.

Then it goes to the bay fishing. Well these fish have been doing a lot of moving around with the cold weather as well but we have managed to get a really good bite going on some. It has mostly been with Sheepshead, or Red fish and don’t let me forget Drum a mix between both. Well that is what I think. It is in the Red fish family but it looks more like a Sheepshead but as far as these fish go we can do some good catching. This time of the year the Sheepshead are spawning and this causes them to be in big schools so when you find a few you can usually get a good bite going. I can say we did have one really great Sheepshead and one of the biggest all year. A fish that was over 6 lbs and man what a fish it put up a great fight as you can see in the picture.

Red fish, well we had some good numbers at times but last w eek most of the fish were a little smaller. We did manage to catch a few keeper fish each day they were just a little smaller. I think we are going to change it up a little and do some fishing with artificial bait this upcoming week so I will let you know how it goes.

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