A cold blast of air did cover the Tampa Bay area recently, but it certainly didn't stay long. It did however, get cold enough to drop the water temperature roughly 10 degrees. Despite the cold air and cold water, we still fished. On some of the colder mornings, we had to hunt for warmer water to find fish that would actually bite. We started in the rivers.
The cold front hovered over Tampa Bay for roughly four days, causing the fish to move around quite a bit in search of warmer water. Much to our liking, many of our usual snook areas turned into redfish areas. Because snook are currently out of season, we just simply haven't been fishing for them. Instead, we've been on the hunt for redfish. Even though we haven't been specifically fishing for snook, we've caught some great ones while fishing for redfish. It is nice to see that there are many snook still alive after the brutally cold winter we had last year. Take a look at the picture of the 37 inch snook we recently caught in a two day tournament. It was deemed the biggest snook of the tournament, which is great when you have a two day tournament with 40 boats. There are still some great snook around the Tampa Bay area. They might be a bit harder to catch, but there are plenty of them in our waters.
The decrease in the water temperature pushed many redfish into the Bay, and the bite has been great. Some days our redfish catch consists of big fish, and others, it is slot-sized fish. With the water temperature being what it currently is, redfishing will continue to be awesome.
The Tampa Bay tarpon might be gone until March, but they have been replaced with grouper. Last week we caught several grouper that were pushing 30 inches. A 30 inch grouper is a nice Bay grouper. Please visit www.castawaychartersinc.com and book your trip today!
