Big redfish moving up in Tampa bay!

Big redfish moving up in Tampa bay!

Report Date: April 12, 2008

Mother Nature is changing it up a bit! Last week, she brought a lot of rain and some wind, making it feel more like summertime. Over all, the fishing has been awesome. We’ve caught snook, redfish, tarpon, trout, and flounder. Although the fishing has been excellent, catching bait has not been so easy. We certainly have had to work harder than we normally do for bait. Catching bait is one of the most important things in fishing. You have to have plenty of bait to catch big numbers of fish at times. We did have a trip or two where we didn’t have as much bait as we would have liked to have, but we still managed to catch a good number of fish.

It has been a long time since I haven’t had enough bait to chum the fish up, but recently, I’ve had a couple of trips where I didn’t have any chum and we still caught a number of fish. It just goes to show you that you don’t have to have as much bait as you think you have to have to catch fish sometimes.

Let’s talk about the great snook. Over the past week a few more big fish have been showing up. The only problem with snook fishing lately has been the boat traffic. It’s not even the amount of people fishing for the bigger snook as the amount of boats running over the fish that caused the problem. It was spring break last week so there was a lot more people on the water than there normally is, so an extra factor to snook fishing was added in. We did catch a few nice fish, but most of the fish we caught were a bit short. A couple of them topped out at about 30 inches, and of course, they were the big ones that got away. We should keep seeing some bigger fish show up over the next couple of weeks as the water temperature comes up more.

On to the

redfish! We managed to get on some great redfish bites last week and we caught a number of fish that were over size. Each trip we caught a few keeper fish, but for the most part, the fish were all 30 inches or larger. Catching a 30 inch redfish on light tackle is some kind of fun. We had 1, 2, 3, even 4 fish on at once at times! This is the kind of red fishing you mostly have during the summer time. It is a great thing to see it this early. As with the snook, as the water temperature keeps coming up, red fishing should just keep getting better.

Its tarpon time with some grouper, kingfish, and mackerel mixed in the bag. We have mostly been targeting the tarpon, but we have been catching many other species. Not knowing what you’re going to hook next makes tarpon fishing interesting. We haven’t had a tarpon trip yet where we haven’t been able to put a fish or two in the air. Lately, the fish aren’t quiet as big as they have been in the past, but most of them are still around 100 lbs. We have also caught a few that were a little smaller. They might be smaller, but they are still great fish. You put a 75 lb to 100 lb tarpon on a line and the person holding that rod will definitely know they have something on the other end. We did hook a few fish last week that pushed the 150 lb mark, which is a great fish. Please visit www.castawaychartersinc.com and book your trip today!

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