Fishing Tampa's Flats and Bay

Posts Tagged ‘cobia’

As a captain and a Tampa fishing guide I spend time before every Tampa Bay fishing charter preparing. Getting ready for that next charter includes rigging tackle,boat preparation and of course pre fishing different areas of Tampa Bay to find out just where the fish are holding up.

Yesterday was one of those days. I have some clients who want to have a fish fry. So my task at hand is to put them on some fish they can take home and put in the fryer. With snook being a strictly catch and release species until the end of September and Redfish being very unpredictable right now I felt the best bet would be some trout,mackerel and Cobia.

The tide was not the best yesterday with a very slow and short incoming turning to a just barely out going. My scouting partner and I thought it best to drift a near by grass flat in the morning and then move further south later for the out going.

The plan worked out pretty good.  The bite was a little slow but we did manage to find some hungry and very fat trout on the grass flat. When the tide slacked we made our move and worked our way south to a small spoil area. This area proved to also hold some nice trout going over 20″ and fat. In the mix we were cut off a few times buy some mackerel only because catching them this day was not as important as finding them so we were using some light leader material. We also got a few flounder that were nice eating size.

Cobia have been sighted and are being caught on a daily basis right now. On the last cast of our day Loren had his bait inhaled by a nice 33″  and legal to keep Cobia. After some drag ripping runs on the light tackle we were able to land the fish for a photo and then release him to be caught another day. This Cobia would of been a nice one for the fryer for sure.

Cobia caught on light tackle spinning gear

Thanks for reading my reports.

If you would like to book a trip for a Tampa Bay fishing charter please call or e-mail me.

Capt Steve