Super bowl Sunday once again felt like spring and not mid winter. Sunny, light winds and temps near 80 adorned lower Tampa Bay. The weather may have been perfect but gathering bait on the flats went from good to nonexistent overnight! Luckily my Pals at the Reel Animals Fishing show directed me to the Skyway Bridge.
My anglers Dave and Son TJ wanted to start the day playing with giant drum. I spent 45 minutes up in the Pathfinders Tower and never saw anything. No problem we will go catch big trout as I have been doing over and over again. Well an hour later we had 1 20" trout to show for all our work. I moved deeper and as planned rapid action on small 12-14" Sea Trout.
We changed gears and ran to an area of hard bottom 2 miles off St. Petersburg Beach. Silver trout hammered every white bait in sight! Curious to see what was deeper we switched to ½ oz jig heads with whitebaits but could not get the baits past the silver trout. We soon found out a jig head with no bait would catch trout after trout! My bottom machine showed a solid line of trout from 12-18' of water. There were acres and acres of silver trout!.
Captain Steven Markovich
