Tampa Bay and Play
May 30th, 2008
Story by SALmonid, Tampa, Florida…..
A week ago, I headed off to Tampa Bay to meet 4 friends and do some angling in Florida. We had two boats to fish from. After the first evening catching up on old times, we were all ready to bag some fish.
It was prime time for big tarpon and that was going to be the main target.
On 3 of the five fishing days, it was overcast and windy and choppy. We used the larger of the two boats – a 25 footer captained by Rick Swanson to go for the tarpon in the main bay and the smaller boat a 19 footer captained by Bubba Sloan to fish the more protected mangrove areas.
We fished live bait on the tides and spent most of the time near the main bridge in the Bay. Overall we hooked 5 tarpon and landed none. All of them were in the 80 110 pound range. Rick had one on for over 45 minutes but did not land it.
I had the thrill of hooking one, watching it madly peel 90 yards of line, come all the way out of the water and shred my line with its teeth. All I could muster was Wow!
We also landed 3-4 grouper which are amazingly strong for their size and got to see two large manatee resting on the bottom in about 10 feet of water. One of these was 8-10 feet in length and likely weighed over 1,000-1,500 pounds.
We also had a great time fishing schools of false albacore feeding at the surface on small baitfish. We found the schools by watching the diving birds and white boiling water where the fish were feeding. Several times, we were able to pull up close enough to the action that we could cast into the middle of the madly feeding school. We were using steelhead wieight spinning rods. When hooked these guys would run 70-100 yards on the first run. After 10 minutes or so we could land and release them. What a gas.
The flats and mangrove fishing was also great, even with the wind. We mainly used 1/8 ounce jigs casting while drifting across the flats or along the mangrove line. We caught lots of fish, the most common being sea trout. I landed a sea trout that was 24-26 inches but the average was 14-16 inches. Captain Bubba landed a nice redfish.
It was a great trip. My thanks to all the guys, especially Rick and Bubba for use of their very nice boats. The weather gave us a challenge but we did not let it slow us down. We are figuring the next trip might need to be for Louisiana or Texas redfish in the winter.
Sal aka The World Traveling Fish Slaying S.O.B. (okay I added that part….but isn’t he?……h3llcat)
