Captain’s Corner: Jay Mastry

The Tampa Bay Times

While this relentless heat wave we are experiencing may suppress the appetites of some species of fish, tarpon seem to thrive in it.  If you’ve not yet had your fill of tarpon fishing this summer, there are still plenty around.  Buddies I fish with have reported double digit hook-ups on some of their recent trips.  We’re not talking little juveniles in residential canals.  Many of them are in the 100 plus pound class.  Most of them have been right off our gulf beaches.  Some of the action has been off Longboat Key, some off Anna Maria.  Others have come from Redington and Madeira beaches.  On recent trips, very few if any at all are observed rolling on the surface.  Anchoring and heavily chumming with cut pieces of shad has been most productive.  A presentation of six or eight rods cast in all directions with fresh dead shad has worked best.  Mangrove snapper fishing in Tampa Bay is about as good as it gets and it’s going to get even better.  Now is when we focus our attention on the rocky edges of the many mile stretch of the main ships channel from well outside Egmont Key to well inside the Skyway Bridge .  There are countless areas of productive hard bottom scattered along both sides of the channel that “mangos” and grouper hold up on.  Some of these areas I’ve stumbled across while slow trolling for kingfish and paying attention to the bottom recorder.  In prepping for their spawning ritual, the mangos we’re catching now are big, they’re fat, and there’s lots of em’.  We’re catching them all on whitebait and small pinfish.

Captain Jay Mastry