Anglers feared red tide would create a ‘dead zone’ in Tampa Bay. Then something happened

Two months ago, red tide had a firm grip on Tampa Bay. Dead fish were seen washing up on shorelines from Tampa across to St. Petersburg and down into Manatee County.

It was so bad the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission put an emergency closure on redfish, snook and trout within the bay, seasons that had opened only two months prior.

At that time, Captain John Gunter thought his beloved deep bay fishery might be shut down for the foreseeable future. Gunter specializes in fishing for grouper and snapper in the middle of Tampa Bay.

“I didn’t go to fish those areas during red tide, I was too scared to. The places I fish were pretty much ground zero,” Gunter said. “There were a few times I would go to catch bait at the Skyway and the bait would be there, living and schooled on the bottom around the bridge.

“But when you’d bring it up through the tide it would be dead before it even hit your well. It was strange to think the bait would be alive below the red tide but you couldn’t keep anything alive when caught.”

During the red tide days, Gunter still managed to find healthy catches of mangrove snapper and snook around the Manatee River, Miguel Bay and Terra Ceia Bay.

“I think the (Manatee) River saves us,” he explained. “The water is almost always pushing out from up river and filters to the Gulf. The flats were still good.”

Two weeks after the most severe red tide was reported in the bay, Gunter made another trip back to see how it was at his mangrove snapper spots. He passed just east of the Sunshine Skyway and looked along the edges of the Tampa Bay shipping channel.

When he showed up, the devastation of weeks prior weren’t even a thought in his mind.

“I basically said screw it, let’s go check and see how it looks, hoping the bait would live. When we went to the middle of the bay, we would of had no idea red tide was there. We started fishing and there was a lot of life. Snapper, grouper and bait were all over. We waxed the snapper on the first trip.”

Since that trip the red tide has remained clear in Tampa Bay while it seems to have spread elsewhere along the Florida coast. Over the past week low concentrations were still present, but anglers have not reported any fish kills in recent weeks.

For Gunter, that means his snapper will remain an option for bay fisherman who thought this summer and fall would be poor for the big estuary.

This week he’s continued to put his clients on mangrove snapper limits and plenty of various-sized gag grouper as well.

“There’s so much bait along the Tampa Bay Channel and all the snapper have been so fat, gorging on it. We’ve been using light jig heads during the slack tide and knocker rigs or chicken rigs when the current picks up. The average fish is 14- to 16-inches and we’ve got a few up to 21-inches. The big big ones haven’t shown up, that’s usually later in September and October.”

Good news for what some feared would be a dead zone for the foreseeable future.

Jon Chapman writes a weekly outdoors column for The Bradenton Herald.