Monday morning I was greeted with calm waters, finally a nice day after several days on nonstop winds. I was very optimistic knowing the fish have had no pressure put on them recently. White bait was plentiful on the bridges, several minutes of chumming was all that was needed to fill the live well. Baits are still a little small for my liking, look for bait to grow rapidly the next few weeks. If you own a " net it's a good time to use it.
We ran to Pinellas Point hoping to find one of the schools of giant Black drum that have invaded local waters. My client today was Tim from Pittsburg; his first cast was met with a solid hit within the first 15 seconds of fishing. One cast one Mackerel how good is that. The bite was only good for 10 minutes and shut down as quickly as it started. Next stop looking for snook in the mangroves resulted in a big goose egg! So much for the fast start. The water was really murky and cooler from last week's cold fronts. We ran further up into Tampa Bay where Tim caught a monster ladyfish. Moments later Tim hooked a nice snook that thrilled all with some great jumping action only to toss the hook at the boat.
The day was strange as we could find fish only to have them shut down quickly. We moved out to the flats and quickly got into trout action. Several nice, very fat trout quickly came to the boat. Moments later Tim hooked a nice redfish once again only to lose it at the stern. The pattern continued as we would get on a trout or two only to have the action abruptly stop. Overall not the best action which I have to attribute to either murky water or the Captain!
Look for the weather to stabilize and fishing patterns typical for spring to resume quickly.
Captain Steven
