Saturday ended up as one of those great days. Captain Steven was on the water from 6 am until dark, sunset was gorgeous on Tampa Bay. Summer is lingering on with water temperatures at 83 degrees but as we lose one or two minutes of daylight per day the water will continue to cool.
Lots of bait on the flats, in fact I actually over stuffed the live well and killed off 100 baits. Lesson learned warm water and low oxygen don't stress the baits.
Snook were more than happy to take alive or dead bait. The bite lasted all day making this Captain and his angler's happy campers. Mixed in were snapper, 3 spine snook and redfish. Twice yesterday I found schools of Jacks which were a blast. To make thing even more exciting with these Jacks I rig my anglers with top water plugs.
Twice yesterday we hooked real slob size snook. In both cases the anglers got treated very poorly. One snook after being pulled out of the mangroves went back in and could not be stopped. I was shocked to see the fish jumping 20' deep in the mangroves.
The trout bite was ok, feisty but smallish 14" fish would take live bait or lures. Mid day I was back at O'Neill's Marina and ran into Capt. Mike Anderson of Reel Animals. Mike said he bit was stupid all day, early in the day I was fishing the same area and could see his anglers scoring left and right. He went on to say they took Black Drum, Redfish and Pompano. I also heard from another guide there is a very large school of Redfish on the beach.
Capt. Steven
