Tampa Bay showed all her beauty Saturday morning. Slightly cooler and dryer air was a welcome relief leaving the O’Neill’s Marina. We picked up Evan our angler and made way to the flats adjacent to the Skyway Bridge. Pinfish were thick in the chum slick but white baits were our target. Patience paid off as white bait started showing up after 10 minutes. I tossed the net 6 times and we were set.
We ran a similar pattern to recent trips focusing on Tampa Bay’s eastern shoreline. With were greeted with low tide so we targeted mangroves on the with deeper water and better tidal flow. Within 5 minutes Evan had his first fish a feisty redfish. The first bite was quick the next took a little work.
We made our way north passing numerous Mackerel and Jacks chasing baits on the flats near the Little Manatee River. We made our way into the river with little success. We moved to the outer Mangrove Islands and found a pile of snook. At first we could not get them to chew but after some coaxing they got aggressive. Evan got hot hooking 5 or 6 snook in the next 20 minutes all 22-27”.
Out of nowhere a school of large Jacks 8-10 pounds cruised right up to the boat, Evan got his bait right into the school but amazingly no takers. Very unusual for Jacks. As we worked our way of the flats we ran into several schools of jumbo Ladyfish, silver spoons worked rapidly often with 3 or 4 fish chasing one bait. We did some searching for Bonita with no success, no surface action or birds.
