Tampa Bay, Tarpon Springs, Clearwater & St. Petersburg

Short Strikes - New Port Richey We had an extremely low tide this morning and I wanted to go fishing but I wanted there to be some water on the flats in the New Port Richey area. So, I waited until around noon to go fishing. When I showed up, a good friend and fellow guide, Capt. Greg DeVault, was just getting off of the water from a charter. We talked a little while a he told me about what a great morning he had had with his client. I was excited. Looked like the fishing was going to be good.   The plan for the day, as it has been quite often lately, was to hit some obscure, out of the way, water that I had never fished before. I've mentioned several times lately that I'm on a mission to hit every square inch of shoreline on my local waters this year no matter how out of the way the spot is, unpromising as it may look, and no matter what reputation the area has. So, I hit such a spot today with less than stellar expectations.   Man were my expectations wrong. I wasn't 5 minutes into working this stretch of shoreline, just North of the Cotee river, before I was pushing fish. It all looked to be redfish and I was feeling the increased heart rate pumping in my chest. The thought of finding fish that I wasn't expecting to find gets my heart racing.   There were wakes everywhere and I was determined to hook up on one with a lure that I hadn't been using much lately. The Gulp Shrimp had been working so well lately that I had been forsaking all others, but today I wanted to hook fish on something else. I tied on a Mirr-O-Lure Mirr-O-Mullet and began "walking the dog". On my third cast I had a fish blow up not once, not twice, but three times on this slick little lure. Every time the fish came up short.   As the big bronze back of the fish broke the surface striking at my lure, all I could think about was that I was surrounded by redfish. I had a few more short strike at my top water plug and quickly became frustrated. So I switched to a mangrove red colored Exude jerkbait rigged on a weightless, weedless, Mustad 5/0 hook. It wasn't 5 casts into trying this setup that I had another huge strike and miss. Again I could see the bronze back of a fish as it struck that I could only assume was a nice redfish chasing after my bait. Not long after that strike I hooked up with a fish that peeled drag on my Daiwa reel just like a mid slot red but to my surprise it was a nice 4 pound trout (picture shown).   I continued to work the area with the same lure and hooked up again with two decent redfish that were buried in the huge school of mullet I had come across. After one photo my camera battery died (poor planning on my part) so I didn't get a chance to take a photo of the 6.5 pound, 28" trout, that came next. As I kept working the area, I soon realized that more than half of the huge wakes that I kept seeing were not redfish but large trout cruising through this shallow flat.   I didn't catch another fish, as the sun was going down quite quickly, but I imagine that had I been live bait fishing that I could have wore out 20"+ trout in this little bay.   Total for the day was 6 short strikes on what I can only assume were large trout, two 24"+ trout and two redfish. Not too bad considering I was fishing new water and only had 4 hours to do it in.   The trout sure seem to have made a great comeback from the bad red tide a couple of years ago. All you have to do is look for some depth changes like pot holes, cuts, or edges of flats on a low tide in Pasco County and your bound to run into them. Just don't be surprised if they short strike your baits. They didn't get that big by being stupid.