Dena and Megan joined me for a 4 hour inshore charter Sunday. Today's goal was to keep rods bent and fill the cooler with fresh filets. The key to spring trips on lower Tampa Bay is a full live well of white bait. While white bait is a great bait it's also serves another role and that's chumming. Snook, Redfish, Mackerel, Jacks and sharks can all be turned on by tossing handfuls of live baits. It also shows you were the snook are, just watch for the explosion.
We started chasing Mackerel which was easy the day prior. What we ended up was a Sea World show! We had 4 Dolphins camp right next to the boat and wouldn't move. When we did hook a Mackerel it was clear what they wanted…our fish. The Mackerel bite was sluggish so we ran to a local grass flats to load up on trout filets. The action started immediately but it wasn't trout it was mackerel and jacks. Megan hollered look at the shark! Seconds later the shark exploded on her bait and she had her hands full to say the least. Megan had the 4' Bonnet head shark to the boat numerous times only to have it run away when it saw the boat. Minutes later we had a 150 pound tarpon swim through our baits, another sure sign its spring. Dena got a keeper trout then another then the bite stopped.
As the tide was getting higher it was time to chase snook and redfish. Snook have been holding in sandy potholes in 2-'3 clean water. We started by chumming and quickly saw snook pop on our chum baits. Dena quickly got the first snook a feisty 23". While catching snook we also caught several trout, ladyfish and jacks. Needless to say it's a fishy time of the year! Megan's rod doubled over with our first redfish of the day. After a tuff battle we had our first redfish a beautiful 26 ¾" which was perfect for filleting. Dena and Megan our really good anglers and made my day easy and lots of fun.
Captain Steven Markovich
