Snapper, snook and redfish
Capt. Fred Everson
August 5, 2009
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report
Mid day fishing has been very tough for the past few weeks because of the heat. I don't have a bimini on my skiff, and when the wind doesn't blow, it gets very hot, even early in the morning. But for those who can take the heat, the fishing has been very good.
I had a wade fishing trip one evening last with Mike Strickland of Riverview and we didn't catch a lot of fish, but we saw plenty. We left the dock at 6:00 PM with a good breeze coming out of the west, and mostly clear skies. The day before the horizon was a wall of thunderclouds, and that's the bane of summer fishing. But this night the wind died down as the sun sunk into the St. Petersburg skyline and the fish went crazy. I caught a couple of short snook and two little trout, but I saw plenty of redfish tails – I just couldn't get the reds to bite. It was simply a great evening to be on the water.
I enjoy wade fishing at sunset on the minus tide of a new moon. When the low occurs around sunset, the bite usually turns on. Before I make this trip, I always check to see if my running lights are working. You also have to know how to get to and from where you are going on an extremely low tide in the dark. Tampa Bay is so shallow it's easy to go aground in broad daylight, so I also carry a high intensity flashlight to spot channel markers. And despite having made this trip hundreds of times, now and then I still find the bottom, albeit at idle speed.
The middle of the bay off Bahia Beach is covered with small Spanish mackerel. After catching a couple of tiny macks on a quarter ounce diamond jig, I decided to let the lure sink all the way to the bottom to see if there were some bigger fish there. After I felt the jig hit bottom, I cranked it up one turn and began to work it up and down. A hard strike turned out to be a ladyfish, and as I went to take it out of the water a five-foot blacktip chomped its tail off. I quickly cut the fish into chunks and baited an 8/0-circle hook on a wire leader. Minutes later the shark struck hard and fast and broke me off on the motor before I could get control. My guess is that where you find mackerel, there will usually be sharks. Blacktips are great gamefish in their own right. They even jump. These fish require heavy tackle – about what you would use for grouper -- and stout wire leaders because of their teeth. They also eat pretty well if you gut them and get them on ice right away.
The bright spot on Tampa Bay this year has been the mangrove snapper bite. I have never seen snapper as plentiful or as big as I have this year. Keli Emery took me to a spot she found a couple of weeks ago where she caught two limits with a friend and the smallest fish was 17 inches. The bite wasn't as hot as the weather the day we went. It was like sitting under a broiler without a breeze, but Keli caught four big snapper and a Spanish mackerel. I caught a ladyfish. Try as I would to hone in on her action, I couldn't buy a snapper.
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