O.K. Who left the refrigerator door open, what happened to fall it seems we went right straight into winter. The water temperature dropped nearly 15 degrees in a three day period that kinda makes you glad we’ve got AC and heat but the poor, poor fish…they don’t. This first cold front should have things on the move. Everything from grouper to snook.
On Monday Captain Mike and myself went out to shoot and episode of our TV show, The Reel Animals Fishing Show, and we stayed here on Tampa Bay. The bait was easy as it has been for quite sometime now. We knew that the bite was going to be tough with a large high pressure cell over the bay, but the thing about our show versus other shows is we have only a few hours to get it done, not several days and it is what it is, that’s Reel Animals. After discussing our strategy we started off on some residential docks because we were on low tide and the deeper water would be a little warmer. We caught a hand full of small snook, and some decent jacks off the docks but nothing to get really excited about. So the next spot was a great transition spot that will hold fish, large fish when they are migrating from the flats to their winter haunts. We had a couple of hits and some nice explosions on some chummies but still looking to put a nice string together. With only a couple of hours left on the incoming tide we hit another little spot and BINGO we have a winner. In about thirty minutes we caught a good amount of keeper to just under the slot snook, top of the slot redfish, and keeper trout.
I am writing this as we are heading out for our Thursday Charter as we had to cancel trips because of weather earlier this week. So we are going to be ready to fish the deeper water for grouper early in the morning and as the day warms up we’ll head in for some snook and redfish. The bait should still be easy. I think we’ll have to concentrate and make the presentation without flaw in order to have a successful trips as is the case after these fronts, but feel confident it should be a great trip.
Be sure to catch our show Saturday mornings at 6:30 on NBC Channel 8 and call in to 1040 am ESPN radio to win some cool fish gear. If you want to catch some of these fish give us a call at 1-866-GAMEFISH or via the web @ www.reelanimalsfishingshow.com Stop by and see us at the Ruskin Seafood Festival this weekend at E.G. Simmons Park it’ll be a great time for the whole family. Until next time do yourself a favor and take a kid fishin’.
