The title of this should say it all. I can't remember the last time I had a week of fishing quite like this past week. Big fish were on the prowl and there were lots of them. The wind didn't give us much of a break the entire week, but it didn't hurt the fishing at all. In fact, it just made it a little rougher getting from one spot to another. With the wind direction being what it was, it wasn't hard to find lots of places to get out of it. Last week is just the beginning of the same type of fishing that we will be doing over the next month.
The Snook fishing has been awesome. We had some big fish and even bigger numbers. It's that time of the year where the Snook are making their way up the rivers to their winter homes so most of the fishing that we do this time of the year is in and around the river. We usually fish around structure in the river. Structure like sea walls, docks, trees in the water, etc… We usually find this type of structure lying on the banks of the river. We caught a lot of Snook this past week, with on in particular that stuck out of the bunch. We managed to catch a Snook that was 39 inches, which is the Snook of the fall to date. This was the Snook of the year on light tackle and the gentlemen that caught it did a good job fighting it. Imagine hooking this fish on 10 lb tess and the Snook breaking the water with his head 4 to 5 times in an attempt to shake the hook and almost taking all the line from the fishing reel more then once while taking big runs all at the same time.
Red fish, Red fish, and more Red fish! Fishing for Red fish has been just about the same as Snook fishing lately, but with more fish and bigger fish. We've had no trouble finding a great school of fish and catching a number of them. Most of the big schools of fish that we have been catching have been running the outside bars. These fish have been in areas where big schools of fish are usually around the shoreline or on the flats and have pushed off the edges where the flat drops off. There have been a number of big schools of fish in these areas, but sometimes you have to put a little time in to find them. When I say we have caught some big fish I mean it! Just look at the picture of this young man's face. This was one of the biggest Red fish of the season. This great Red fish was 38 inches and like the big Snook this fish was just as much work on the light tackle. It took this young man awhile to get this great fish in. His buddies pulled in two fish each in the same time it took him to get that great one in.
We even had a Trout that was over 25 inches last week. We hadn't been doing much Trout fishing, but we managed to catch this great fish while fishing for Snook and Red fish. Trout are going out of season next month so until they open back up we usually don't do much fishing for them. Unless you want to finish off with a slam… Snook, Red fish, Trout. All of the bigger fish we have caught over the past few weeks have been mixed in with the Snook and Red fish.
The Tarpon are still around. We had a day or two where the wind let up a little so we managed to do some Tarpon fishing. Lately, every trip we've managed to hook 5 to 6 fish before the guys or girls got tired of reeling these big fish in. Each trip we've been able to boat a fish or two. I'm sure you know as well as I do that with the Tarpon this at times can be a hard thing to do. All of the Tarpon we've been catching have been up in the bay around the Sunshine Skyway Bridge where it is really windy. When it gets a little windy it's tough to fish this area. These great fish will be around until the end of November if it doesn't get too cold. Please visit www.castawaychartersinc.com for pictures.
