Tampa Bay Fishing with Mom 07/21/2012

We had a late tide this past weekend (3:45 pm); it was nice to sit in the air condition during the most intense part of the day. I loafed around until about 2 pm. I got up and got the equipment ready, hooked up the boat, and I was on my way. Mom wanted to get out and do a little fishing, so I stopped, picked her up, and then headed to the ramp. The tide was already pretty high, so we quickly hit the marker in search of bait. As we approached, I could see that the marker was heavily occupied. (It looked like the theater on opening night for the Batman trilogy) Instead of rudely cutting through the anchored boats, I kindly turned around and headed back to the flats. We had a couple dozen select shrimp and artificial, so I felt confident that we would have success. We stopped, and I cast mom's shrimp into a small opening in the mangroves. It wasn't long before the cork did a disappearing act; I expressed urgency and told her to keep the rod tip down and pull hard, up pops a nice little 19-inch red. She released her to fight another day. I quickly re-bait the hook and toss it in the same opening in the mangroves. It hadn't laid there for more than a few seconds, and she has hooked up again. After a short battle, up comes and decent 21-inch fish.

She revives the little red, and it gracefully swims back toward cover. The next 40 minutes was nonstop snook action; every cast yielded a snook. Many of which were 15 inches or so. We quickly unhooked the little guys and got them back into the water. The snook population is undoubtedly rebounding. Hopefully, with the recent decision to keep the season closed, we will see profound future results. She released a dozen or so snook, and then the tide started to switch. We switched tempos/tactics and decided to start pitching artificial baits toward the shaded mangrove roots. We caught a couple of decent reds from 22-23 inches. I could hear the storms quickly approaching off in the distance, so we started our way back to the ramp. We got off the water just in time, but boy did it rain cats and dogs. The boat had to sit out in the driveway and be rinsed by Mother Nature until the lightning passed. I finally got baby Hewe (the boat) all cleaned up and put him to bed. Overall it was a great few hours of fishing, I hope you all had a safe and successful day too.