Outdoors Column | Fishing for grouper from a kayak in the middle of Tampa Bay. It’s as crazy as it sounds

As offshore fishing boats get bigger and faster, anglers are now fishing deeper more often than ever before. Waters that once seemed to be rarely visited on the continental shelf can be visited in a single day. 300-mile trips are done with ease.

It’s a bit extreme, but that type of trip still doesn’t seem as crazy as fishing the middle of Tampa Bay for gag grouper and sharks in a kayak.

“The technology on the kayaks is now amazing,” said Capt. Erik Stevens, who guides anglers from a Hobie PA17T 17-foot catamaran style kayak. “We can average 2.5 to 3 miles per hour with these peddle drives. The system is mimicked to how a penguin moves through the water, and two people doing it together is easy, smooth, steady and comfortable.”

Stevens’ gag grouper trips range from eight eet of water on flats edges all the way to the middle of the bay. If the wind is going predominately one direction, he’ll arrange a start and pickup going all the way across the bay. During the trip he’s fishing channel edges and hard bottom with heavy tackle.

“If you find the hard bottoms, you’ll find the gag activity. Tampa Bay has channels and they’re kind of like fish highways. The pipeline that runs into the Gulf is a highway. Even certain passes are highways. We have access to these massive fish and if you’ve got the tackle you can get them.”

Heavy spinning gear is Stevens’ preferred grouper tackle, with 40-60 pound rated rods and 8500 or bigger series reels that he trolls big lipped diving plugs on with heavy braided line.

“We mostly troll and the clients hold the rods by hand. When a grouper hits you know it! I call it getting your arms ripped off. These fish are big and mean and pull hard so you better hold on tight. You’ve got to have some type of fitness to get a grouper from a kayak, not everyone can do it. It seems like every inch bigger they get the fight goes up exponentially.”

This past week Stevens was able to put fellow kayak enthusiast Pamela Wirth on four gag grouper, including one keeper sized fish, in just 45 minutes of fishing. A trip before that they landed nine undersized gag grouper and three keepers. The biggest was 29.5-inches.

For every grouper they hook, Stevens knows the tax man isn’t far behind.

“We’ve lost so many to sharks this year. The biggest fish we hooked was eaten to his head by a shark. We put that head next to a 29-inch grouper and it was a much bigger fish!”

And when a shark decided to eat his favorite lure, he wasn’t going to let it win that easy. The 52-inch blacktip was pulled into the kayak where it thrashed about the tight space, something Stevens wouldn’t recommend for the average angler!

“I wasn’t going to let my favorite lure go that easy! It’s expensive, and when margins are so thin I don’t want to lose it. On this kayak it never really felt unsafe. We’ve been in some windy seas and dealt with big fish, but still don’t feel like we’ve pushed the limit of it all.”

For more information, Stevens can be reached through his website, FishLikeUs.com