March 18, 2010

Other than today ( which is rainy and blowing 20-25) we had pretty good fishing this past week. The day time temp. has climb and the nights haven't gotten as chilly so the water temp. is up 5-7 degrees. The sight fishing in upper Tampa bay is still very good. We caught Redfish on jigs and flies on Monday.
Tuesday I spent scouting the lower bay in preparation to shoot a fly fishing show for television. The show is called Hooked on Fishing with Capt.Bill Miller. Bill is a great guy and has a wonderful reputation, so I really wanted to provide some good footage. The forecast for both Tuesday and Wednesday was mostly cloudy skies and a stiff southeast wind. I figured sight fishing was going to be out of the question so I when to check on some trout flats so we would have some fish to get on camera. Tuesday the weather wasn't as bad as perdicted and I found trout everywhere I looked. I even checked a Redfish spot and found good numbers so I felt pretty confident. The weather on Wednesday turned out to be bright and sunny and we went sight fishing. So much for all those trout. We ended up fishing a lot of Redfish but could not get one to eat. Bill is a good cast and everything seemed to be perfect, it just didn't happen. One of the school we fished had easily 300 fish. That may seem good, but for fly fishing it can make it hard. Once one fish spooks the whole school gets wacked out and getting them to eat at that point is really tough. Oh well, we did manage to catch a few trout on the way in to have some fish for the show, but it would of been really nice to catch a few of the Redfish on tape.
I've started to look for the baby Tarpon but haven't found them yet. There are schools of ladyfish in most of the canals and some big and small black drum on the flats. Speaking with some of the other guides the sheephead fishing appears to still be going strong and I've heard of a few in shore grouper being caught.
Hopefully I will be able to report on some Tarpon soon.