Outdoors Column | Fishing tournament season is heating up in Tampa Bay
An inshore fishing tournament starting at midnight might make some participants nervous, but Marty Slade knew exactly what he wanted to do during last weekend’s Tighten The Drag competition.
“I used to doing a ton of night fishing, but these days I need my sleep!” said the captain of team Slade ‘Em. “I’ve done a lot of flats fishing at night and have developed a pattern for the fish. If you get high water at night, they’re generally in the same areas as during the day and you don’t have the boat traffic.”
A bright full moon lit the sky during the early morning fishing to help Slade through darkness. At the start they headed up into Tampa Bay to fish for redfish.
“We generally try to fish near spoil islands uptight to the mangroves,” Slade explained. “For our redfish we use a lot of dead bait, then live whitebait for trout and pinfish or grunts for snook.”
It didn’t take long before their 15-mile run paid off. Within a few hours they caught redfish to 33.5 inches, then moved south to begin fishing for trout. On back-to-back casts they landed a pair of 23-inch trout, giving them enough time to fish for snook near St. Petersburg.
“We might have been able to improve the trout or redfish but wanted to leave time to snook fish before the sun came up. We got a 37.5-inch snook while dock fishing, so we had all of our fish caught by 5 a.m.”
Despite having more fishing time available Slade knew they would have a hard time upgrading their catch. They opted to fish a few spots before heading home to shower and eat lunch before going to weigh in their night’s catch by the 3p.m. deadline. With a redfish, snook and trout slam of 94 inches they would take first place ahead of Breakfast Beer at 90.75 inches, Double Bounty at 85 inches and Rats on da Cheese at 84.5-inches.
Coming up next for fishing teams will be three local tournaments in Manatee County, starting with next weekend’s Suncoast Saltwater Shootout In-Shore Fishing Tournament from Whiskey Joe’s. May 14 will be the return of the Crosthwait Memorial and June 11 will bring the Fire Charity Fishing Tournament. This year the team with the best finish in all three tournaments will be crowned The King of the River, bringing a unique prize and cash for the team that grinds out the three overnight inshore tournaments.
For more information on each visit facebook.com/suncoastfishingtournament for the Suncoast Fishing Tournament, fishcrosthwait.com or firecharityfishing.com/