Tampa Snookin'

I recently had the opportunity to go to Tampa for the first time.  It was a work trip, but since the days were still long enough that I thought I’d be able to sneak out for an hour or so after work.  I was also invited by a client to go out on a guided trip the Friday afternoon I was there.  I chose to take them up the offer and red eye flight home instead of the originally planned afternoon flight.  Beautiful weather in a beautiful place or head back to Memphis a couple hours earlier…it was a tough choice.  I planned accordingly and spent a couple evenings spinning up a few different flies to add to the box, with a primary focus on experimenting on larger versions of the Cheech's low fat minnows in the 2/0 range.

Going on the little information I could find on wade fishing in the bay that would be fairly close to my hotel, I waded out onto a grass flat with the satellite images I pulled from Google Earth on the location of the channels I would target.  The wind was blowing directly at the shoreline at a stiff 25 knots, so my fly rod remained holstered, as conventional was my only real option if I wanted a shot at covering a decent amount of unfamiliar water.  To my surprise, my very first cast yielded a nice snook taking a shot at my bait right in front of me.  Unfortunately I didn’t come tight, and it remained the only excitement I'd see that evening.  Other than a couple small trout attempting to eat my large topwater presentation to no avail, I blanked day one.  However, I did witness a great sunset, so it wasn’t a total loss.

The second evening proved much more interesting even while being welcomed again by similar wind conditions.  I fished the opposite side of the flat, and as I waded out, I had a close encounter with the first manatee I had ever seen.  Shortly after a dolphin breached in the channel I was fishing.  So wildlife was definitely more plentiful.  After switching up lures I finally came tight on a Spanish mackerel, and shortly thereafter I hooked into a small jack crevalle.  The evening was capped off with a couple 10” speckled trout on topwater as the sun sank below the horizon.  Getting a decent picture of the mack was not easy, as you can tell.

Friday turned out to be another perfect weather day, aside from the wind remaining.  We boarded the boat and headed to a sheltered cove to target snook.  I had never caught a snook before, and was excited to attempt to cross it off my list.  It didn’t take long before all 4 of the people I was fishing with landed a snook, all in the 3lb range.  I boated 3 more before deciding to make the switch to my 8wt.  I had several follows on my first fly, but that was all.  I altered my approach from my larger streamer, to a small, sparsely tied bend back fly I had in mind for mackerel.  Slinging that fly up against the mangroves a couple times was all it took to finally seal the deal on my 5^th ever snook, and first on the fly.  I hooked into one more, but it got off at the boat.  By this time, the 4 of us had landed over 20 snook in little more than 2 hours.

The First

The First on the Fly

 The guide posed the option of fishing for reds on live bait off the bottom in deep channels (since the wind prohibited sight fishing for them).  The other option was to chase mackerel, bluefish, and jacks in the more open water of the bay.  We chose this as to keep the fishing more active.  Also, I had never caught a bluefish, and never a jack or mackerel on the fly.  On my first couple of casts I hooked into a ladyfish, and the others tangled with jacks and catfish right off the bat.  We made a slight adjustment in location and we found the bluefish.  I was very surprised at how hard they pulled.  The 3lb blue I hooked was good fun on my 8wt.  One of the others caught a large bluefish by Tampa standards at around 10lbs.  I had another bluefish hit my fly a couple casts after landing the first.  I saw the take and barely felt a tug.  He chomped right through my 20lb fluoro leader like butter.  I forgot my wire leaders in my car that I  bought specifically for this circumstance.  Lesson learned.

No Lipping This Guy

The day ended too quickly, but great days on the water always do.  My next trip down to Tampa may be prolonged into the weekend.