TAMPA BAY TARPON JUNE 2008

Outstanding… that’s what fishing has been lately. We certainly aren’t having any trouble getting on a great bite. If you want to catch a few fish to take home to eat, the fish of a lifetime, or both now is the time to do it. The weather is starting to warm up thanks to good ole’ summertime, but don’t worry, you won’t be thinking about how hot it is when you are reeling in a big tarpon or catching a snook on every other cast.

The snook bite has been the best in the Bay lately. The fish have been in different areas, depending on the tide, but that hasn’t stopped us. We haven’t had any trouble catching some big numbers of snook. Snook are in and around the passes and high moving tide areas because they are starting to get ready to spawn. They are also gathering in big schools.

One fish that we have had a bit of trouble catching is the redfish. Since the last full moon they have been hard to come by, but if you put enough time in, you can still catch a few. We are getting close to that time of the year when the redfish bite will be awesome. Believe it or not, it needs to warm up a little more for the bull redfish.

Last week we had some great trout fishing. We didn't have any trouble catching a mess of trout for my clients to take home. We did have a few days where we met our limits for numbers and upper size limits. You are allowed to catch four trout per person and one of these fish can be over 20 inches

Last but not least… we have been doing a lot of tarpon fishing lately. It hasn’t mattered whether we were fishing up in the bay or off the beaches; we had some great luck with these fish in both places. I saw some of the biggest fish I have seen so far this summer this week. The good thing is that they were on the end of our fishing line, but the bad thing is that they weren’t there for long. We did manage to boat some great fish as well. We had a number of fish that were 150 lbs and over. It’s breathtaking when you see a 100 lb tarpon jumping out of the water and it is on the end of your line screaming the drag out. As I’ve mentioned in a few of my last reports, we have been fishing in the Professional Tarpon Tournament Series in Boca Grande, Fl. for the last five weekends. We made the top 25 out of 60 boats, so we fished in the Jim Beam Tarpon Cup Championship this past weekend. The top 25 teams fished the first day of the
tournament at an attempt to weigh two fish to make it to the top five and the top five teams fished on the second day of the tournament. We boated a small fish early the first morning, but didn’t take it to the scale. Roughly 20 minutes to 30 minutes later, we caught another fish that weighed 130 lbs. We took this fish to the scale and weighed it as one of our fish for the day. It was a great fish considering that most of the fish that were weighed prior to ours were only 80 lbs to 125 lbs. We hooked 4 to 5 more fish to finish the day out, but didn’t managed to get any of them back to the boat. Never the less, it was great fishing and a lot of fun. The tournament airs on the Sunshine Network beginning July 3, 2008. Please visit www.castawaychartersinc.com and book your trip today.