Spring is in the air with warm sunny days pushing 80 and water temperatures reaching 70 on Tampa Bay. At Sunrise we were looking for Drum along with 10 other boats. After 45 minutes of looking we changed gears and ran to the Port Manatee area in search of Mackerel. The deep flats that had been holding huge numbers had nothing going on. We took several trout, ladyfish and flounder. No Mackerel anywhere.
We decided to chase trout and had amazing results in 3-5' on the vast grass flats adjacent to Tierra Verde. DOA CAL jerk shad baits in motor oil color was irresistible as trout after trout pounded our offerings. After catching 40-50 we decided to leave the hot action and look for redfish.
Focusing on docks in 4-6' we scored 8 nice reds in 30 minutes. These bruisers nailed live shrimp bounced along the bottom. We caught all our redfish very tight to the docks if you didn't cast deep into the pilings you would not get hit.
Another set of docks scored 8 more redfish all slightly bigger then the previous fish. It was work getting the redfish out of the docks and not getting cutoff on sharp pilings. The redfish are very aggressive after winters cold water temperatures.
Captain Steven Markovich
