Saturday's awesome tides made picking today's target species difficult. Tarpon, Snook, Redfish, Trout, and Mackerel would all be eager to chew. We decided to chase a variety of fish so we needed to gather white baits, threadfins and crabs. White baits we gathered quickly on a local grass flat, then we gathered threadfins by drifting into the school and tossing the net in 28'. Crabs we would gather on the weed lines with the outgoing tides.
Tarpon were first on our list so we deployed large threadfins on 6/0 circle hooks into the shadow line of the Skyway Bridge. We spotted our first tarpon after 15 minutes but no takers. My angler today Dave got hit after 30 minutes but we quickly realized it was a mackerel. We had the same thing occur on the next bait.
We decided to chase snook so we made a quick run over to Tampa Bay's eastern shoreline. Tossing white baits we had not a hit in 15 minutes. Then the bite turned on and it was hit after hit from 25" snook for 20 minutes. It's great to see quality snook action.
Next stop was a redfish hole only today we found jacks and numerous black tip sharks eager to join the party. We also had cobia chase baits but no hook ups. Jacks were chasing bait all around the boat creating fun sight fishing.
We next visited my mackerel trout hole and it was as planned. Trout inhaled bait after bait free lined in 6-8' of water. Most were 15" with several nice 20" fish. The large mackerel showed up and it was cutoff after cutoff until we got 40 pound leader on. Even 40 got cut off by these large 6-7 pound mackerel. The drag screamed signaling another big mack! These speedsters hit like a freight train.
Captain Steven Markovich
www.onthemarkcharters.com
