Wow, what a week this turned out to be, I have been down in Charlotte Harbor running airboat charters and the fishing was awesome. My week started in Gasparilla Sound on Sunday with the wind blowing out of the north at 30 knots, not bad conditions for the airboat. The water was low and leaving fast, the only problem was the wind went from 30 to 35 and gusty, a little tough even in the airboat.
We called it quits around noon with only 12 or so reds caught. It was a tough day. The next three days (Mon, Tues, Weds) were awesome some of the lowest water I have seen in ten years down there. The fish had no choice but to find a hole and hang out, we were able to take the airboat and pick these fish off, it was like fishing in a barrel. We caught between 30 and 40 slot reds a day and had several more rats. The fish were eating just about everything you put in front of them, the main bait was a Exude dart on a 1/8oz jig-head, color didn’t matter. We were also able to get them to hit topwater in the afternoon when it warmed up a little. The areas we were in the most were Whiddens Creek, and Bull bay, with the water as low as it went I had it all to myself and it looked more like pasture land that saltwater flats. The final day of Airboating was suppose to be on Thursday the 24th but due to brisk south winds on Wednesday there was going to be a little more water than what we needed. Instead of canceling the trip we decided to fish out of New Port Richey on my Banshee Extreme. This turned out to be a very good idea as we were into fish all day, Anclote Island gave us about 80 trout between 18 and 24 inches. We went south to another area bar, A good friend and fellow guide had told me about some redfish that were hungry the day before. As we arrived we could see the mullet working in shallow, we approached them and started catching redfish right away. After about an hour we called it a day with 80 trout and about 30 or so redfish. Hopefully the weather will stay calm and allow us to continue some of the best fishing of the year.
