Our mild winter continues and the unseasonably warm weather has kept fishing hot on the flats. Water temps have been stable around 65-67 deg in the bay, pushing 70 deg on the shallow dark bottom flats mid to late afternoon once the sun has had time to time to warm everything up. Combined with the afternoon incoming tides, these warm winter conditions have offered great opportunities to target snook, redfish, and big winter gator trout in shallow water. The slack mid day winds and crystal clear conditions have also presented some awesome sight fishing opportunites on the flats, so keep your eyes peeled for cobia, black drum, redfish and more!

September wrapped up with some epic Tampa Bay inshore fishing- a variety of species are on offer at the moment and some great weather conditions the past couple weeks has allowed us to mix it up each day. There is good bait all over the bay, and flats fishing action for snook and redfish will likely improve as we move into October and early fall conditions. The mangrove snapper action has been excellent all summer long, and a good bite should continue until we start to get our first cold fronts of the fall season. Acres of threadfin herring are nearshore and are being blitzed by hoards of spanish mackerel- the bonita and kingfish won’t be far behind once water temps start to drop a little!

Spring has definitely sprung in tampa bay and the fishing most trips has been fantastic. White bait is plentiful in the bay, the fish are moving, and there are a variety of options and species to target this time of year inshore. We’ve been catching a lot of slot and overslot snook up to 37” which is great news after the extended cold snap we had several weeks ago. The big sheepshead and big trout are also still around, the trout fishing in particular has been fantastic through the winter and early spring with lots of fish over 20” and numerous around the 24-26” mark. In the last week or two, the spanish mackerel have started to show back up as well and we can only hope that the kingfish will not be too far behind. And of course, we’re keeping our eyes out every day for those first early season tarpon that should start showing up soon around the bridges.