Tampa Bay’s south shore an often overlooked gem

Capt. Jason Prieto has spent his entire life fishing the south shore of Tampa Bay. It’s an area often disregarded by Bradenton’s inshore anglers, as most tend to fish areas like the Manatee River, Sarasota Bay and Terra Ceia.

The south shore is miles of untouched mangrove shoreline, with many nooks and crannies around the Little Manatee River, Cockroach Bay and Bishops Harbor estuaries.

On Thursday, I was able to join Capt. Prieto on one of his rare “off” days. He’s captained about 275 charters in the past year and still manages to do the Tampa Fishing Outfitters Radio show on Sunday mornings between 8-9 a.m. on 1040 AM. We jumped aboard his beautiful 24-foot Canyon Bay boat and started to push out from Little Harbor.

About 50 yards after pushing off and the sun peaking above the tree lines to the east, a school of small tarpon showed their interest in the glass minnows that showered in the harbor. The tarpon momentarily distracted us for a few casts but didn’t seem too interested in any lures. We then pushed southwest toward Port Manatee, where mixed size schools of bait awaited their trip into Prieto’s well.

With bait acquired we didn’t venture far to find a few hungry snook.

“I call this spot the aquarium,” Prieto said. “The water is always very clean and you can see the fish swimming around the boat.”

He was right. Water that looked like the Florida Keys made it easy to see the schools of snook, snapper and other miscellaneous fish. We would work through a few of the snook on live bait while Prieto used a chunk of ladyfish hoping for a bigger snook. After catching a half dozen snook, we relocated to look for redfish and more schools of snook.

Prieto made excellent use of technology and stealthily approached the snook schools by deploying his Rhodan trolling motor quite a distance from the holes he wanted to fish. It paid off as we reached his preferred holes in the middle of the vast flats. He fired a bat full of live chum and the snook happily took up the free offerings.

As our hooked baits went out, snook started flying around the boat during the best bite of the day. The last snook we would catch would be the biggest, a 30-incher that we would release, something Prieto encourages.

“I make my living catching these fish,” he said. “It’s so hard to catch a fish in the slot, so when I do I don’t like to keep them. There are much better tasting fish like snapper that are plentiful, so if people want to catch fish for dinner that is what we will go do.”

With the heat kicking in and no wind, we made one more run to target redfish up near Apollo Beach. The tide was low and mullet were schooled up on the outsides of the flat. Prieto saw the distinctive look of a fall redfish school pushing water, and set us up into position to get a shot at them.

The redfish charged, and we put our baits in their path. The school of about 75 redfish swam up to the boat, bypassed our baits and took off swimming as fast as they came. “It’s hard to get them to eat when they’re like this,” Prieto said. “They’ll keep moving without settling down until the tide comes back up a bit.”

We chased and chased, but couldn’t get any takers. It was good to see redfish schools have finally made their way into the bay, something that has been lacking this year.

For Prieto, he’ll be staying busy year round with charters. In the winter he does some of the best snook fishing around, targeting them up inside the Manatee River. For those interested in fishing with Capt. Prieto along the south shore of Tampa Bay, he can be reached through his website at SteadyActionFishingCharters.com or via phone at 813-727-9890.

This story was originally published September 24, 2016 at 6:13 PM with the headline "Tampa Bay’s south shore an often overlooked gem."