It's starting!

It's starting!

Report Date: January 1, 2004

Here we go with a little bit of everything! We’ve got a bit of bay fishing and a bit of ruff off-water fishing to talk about. We also have some very nice weather to thank for some great days on the water.

I will start with back water fishing. Most of the fishing has still been great for Sheepshead and Red fish. We’ve been catching a mixed bag with all this. A little bit of everything in the bay has been around the areas were the Sheepshead and Red fish have been hanging. Flounder, Snapper, Drum, Jacks, Snook, Trout, and a bunch of others. I can say one thing about the Sheepshead - I have never caught as big and as many that were such good size in all the years that I have been fishing. I don’t know if you can tell form the picture, but we had two Sheepshead that were over 7 lbs this past week. That is a big Sheepshead. We had a number of days that we caught fish that were over 5 lbs. Fish this size are great fish. I can say one thing… You get a fish this size on your line and you will learn what it is all about in a hurry. The Red fish have still been a little smaller. We’ve caught a few keepers each trip. Most of these fish are only 15-20 inches, but there still a lot of fun to catch. We’ve had a few fish that have been over 25 inches a few different days.

I know I did mention something about Trout earlier. We’ve been catching a few of these on Shrimp. Over the last couple of days we started using live bait (Shiners) on the flats caught a good number of Trout. The Snook and Red fish are next! We’ve just been waiting for the water temperature to come up about 2 degrees. This will turn everything on.

We took a near shore trip this week. The fishing was great, but it was a little choppy so we deiced to venture a bit farther out. We did manage to catch some great fish though. As you can see in the picture, this young man caught a great fish or helped catch a great fish. What a fight it was. This fish was all most as big as him.

Next week hopefully I will be able to tell you how good the Snook are biting!

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Tampa Bay – Bradenton – Sarasota – Boca Grande
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