Tips for Your Weekend Fishing Expedition: Tarpon Make Move from Passes to Bays

As glass minnows  begin to swarm inside Tampa Bay, many tarpon have begun their summertime move from the passes to the bays.

The Howard Frankland Bridge, Courtney Campbell Causeway and Gandy Bridge and on the east side of the bay by downtown Tampa and the Hillsborough River, in 7 to 15 feet of water, typically hold these summertime silver kings. Looks for the popping on the surface of hatch bait and sneak into the area with your favorite topwater lure, such as the MirrOlure Top Dog, among many -- casting a few feet ahead of the rolling tarpon.

There are still scattered tarpon off the beaches, and silver kings have been known to stay around the Sunshine Skyway fishing piers until Christmas.

For inshore species, anglers can use this small “hatch” bait on flats and the nearshore reefs for redfish, mangrove snapper, flounder, Spanish mackerel, silver and speckled trout, sharks and snook.

Net the bait in any passes, cuts or at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge – anywhere there’s rapidly-moving water.

Also, 50-cent-piece-sized pinfish has also reportedly been effective redfish bait.

Try fishing with a popping cork on 10-pound braided line and a 25-pound fluorocarbon leader with a No. 4 hook (to match the hatch).

Also, Spanish mackerel have been on nearshore reefs as well as the artificial reef on the bay side of Egmont Key.

A reminder that the recreational harvest of red snapper made an abrupt closure on July 18, and snook season on the Gulf Coast and in the Everglades will not re-open, as was typical, on Sept. 1.