Captain’s Corner: Jay Mastry

The Tampa Bay Times

For those of us that just can’t get our fill of tarpon fishing, there’s still plenty around to battle with.  This time of year herds of late season tarpon roam the upper bay.  You may find them near the Courtney Campbell Causeway then a couple days later around the Howard Franklin.  Particularly coming off this full moon they’ll be bunched up around the Gandy.  On a recent trip near the Howard Franklin Bridge, we jumped six silverkings and let the biggest one go we estimated to be 130 pounds.  While my favorite bottom bait, shad have been hard to come by… chunks of mullet worked just fine.  If looking for something better to eat, the mangos are still chewing good along the rocky edges and ledges of the ships channel inside the Skyway Bridge.  Though much of the bait we’re castnetting on the flats around Snell Isle is smaller than we like, spending a little extra time anchoring and chumming them has produced some of the three inch whitebait we prefer.  It’s late September…. And in years past this is when reports of straggler kingfish being caught begin coming in.  And it’s often close to shore.  Before the Redington Long Pier closed the hard core “pier rats” fishing from the structure would be among the first to get in on the action.  Soon after, kings would begin showing up on the Clearwater hard bottom and the Blinds Pass drop.  Get ready, they’ll be coming to a beach near you!

Captain Jay Mastry