Captain’s Corner: Jay Mastry

The Tampa Bay Times

Favorable tides associated with last weekends new moon triggered a “bite” we hadn’t seen in awhile.  Saturday morning during a single stop on a patch of hard bottom in 45 feet west of St. Pete Beach provided a variety of action.  Once we got their attention with a chum bag and cut slivers of sardines – it was on.  A cobia, triggerfish, hogfish, yellowtail snapper, bonita, mackerel, short grouper, mangrove snapper and kingfish helped themselves to every offering we sent down.  Whitebait, pinfish, frozen sardines, squid and shrimp made up our menu.  We had kingfish so chummed up under our boat we eventually had to stop using live bait in order to get the baits to the bottom.  Mangos were our targeted species but kings would either cut us off or get hooked before we could get down.  Switching to shrimp proved effective.  Though I’d rarely consider kingfish a nuisance, they only were as we gathered a bunch of more favorable fish for a buddy’s fish fry.  Though we never caught any we’d be proud of in this weekends “King of the Beach” tournament, what they lacked in size they made up for in numbers.  Tarpon also become more aggressive during the new moon phase.  They like to chew particularly during the stronger than normal dumping outgoing tides in the late afternoon.  That opportunity will arise again on and around May’s full moon on the 5^th.

Captain Jay Mastry