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Tampa Bay - South Shore
Capt. Fred Everson
December 21, 2007
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report
It doesn’t feel much like Christmas, but for local anglers that’s a good thing. Temperatures continue to reach highs in the 80s and water temps hover around 70 degrees – about 10 degrees above normal on both counts.
Capt. Tom Rinehart of Apollo Beach said he went offshore in good weather and caught a mess of grunts and short grouper. He said he got rocked by one big fish, but couldn’t drag it out of its hole.
Water clarity is as good as it ever gets and sight-fishing opportunities abound on the Southshore flats. Long casts with large live shrimp on light tackle will catch a number of species, including snook with the water this warm. Snook are a catch and release proposition on the West Coast since the season closed on December 01.
One fishery does not benefit from this prolonged spell of warm water. For there to be an abundance of cobia in Tampa Bay during the winter months we need a sudden and prolonged drop in water temperature before Thanksgiving. When that doesn’t happen, the ling simply migrate, and I suspect that’s what happened this year. There are always a few fish that linger, but the bulk of the population heads south as conditions permit.
The warmer water has also kept bonnethead sharks from bunching up on the flats as they usually do in the winter months. There are a few fish around, and these are bigger sharks. I also saw a few blacktips on my last trip. Blacktips are great fighters, and they call for wire leaders, where the bonnetheads do not.
I am also seeing quite a few flounder while poling across the sandbars south of the mouth of the Little Manatee River. I had two fish take jerk baits last week and they hung onto them all the way back to the boat, then let go just as I reached for the net. Best bet for flounder would be a lure with less space between the point of the hook and the tail of the lure. A pompano jig is perfectly suited to the short striking flat fish.
Light winds, sunny skies and warm water through much of December makes for excellent fishing. There is still some bait on the flats and on the range markers in the middle of the bay, along with Spanish mackerel, so Southshore anglers should have a very Merry Christmas this year!
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