The amazing winter weather continues on Tampa Bay. Once the dense fog burned off we were treated to balmy conditions with highs near 80. My anglers Jack and son Joshua from Chicago got things started quickly as the very first cast resulted in a spunky trout. The white bait wasn't in the water 10 seconds before it was fish on.
We stayed busy catching small trout regularly for an hour. Jack and Joshua were tossing white baits on a float in 4-6' of 66 degree water. It was that easy.
We moved into skinny water 1-2' looking for big trout and had zero luck the first 30 minutes. We moved ½ mile and found 2 boats killing big trout from a large sandy pothole. I got as close as possible without messing up the other anglers and took a nice 23" trout.
Hoping to find the school of big redfish I have been working the last week was easy. They were exactly in the same spot as the last 3 days. It was awesome watching the 30"-40" giant reds cruise crystal clear skinny water. Jack said they look like swimming logs! Joshua's reel began to scream with a huge redfish over 35". The big red ran 30 yards of line and was putting up a big fight then sadly the line went slack. Just minutes later Joshua connected again on another beautiful redfish. Then the unthinkable the red came unbuttoned. Unlike trout trout redfish once hooked tend to stay hooked with big rubbery mouths.
Wanting to get Joshua and Jack on big fish we ran down the giant drum and instantly hooked a giant drum 40-50 pounds. Joshua was in a big battle only to have a boat run over his line. We hooked several more from the school of hundreds but lost them all to other boats. The giant drum will be here for 4-6 weeks making for some wild action. (typical drum pictured).
Capt. Steven
