Know your water: Fishing Tampa Bay

A couple of weeks ago my son took me fishing.  We have fished the west coast of Florida for decades, however, our home-water of Tampa Bay is always an adventure when we are on it.  Part of that reason is the sheer size and scope of the bay itself as Tampa Bay is roughly 400 square miles in size.  Forty miles long, it is bordered by three large counties and fed by four main rivers and over 100 small tributaries. 

Getting To Know the Bay

Most of the water is salt, but much of the backwater shorelines actually hold brackish water, or a salt/freshwater mix. This makes Tampa Bay one of the few open water bays in the world where you will find both alligators and sharks. The bay is home to over 200 species of fish including snook, redfish, spotted sea trout, tarpon, snapper and grouper.

The average depth of the bay is only 12 feet, however in the shipping channels depths can reach over 43 feet. It is not uncommon to watch your sonar register in inches and within a few hundred yards drop off to 30 feet or more. On top of that, folklore holds that the bay was once a favorite port-of-call for pirates in the 1800’s.  

While the bay holds untold numbers of wrecks and sunken boats, it appears they hold tremendous numbers of reef fish as opposed to pirate treasure. In short, Tampa Bay may be one of the most diverse ecosystems in North America and home to some of the best fishing Florida has to offer.

A Lifetime of Fishing Experiences

If you fished Tampa Bay exclusively your entire life, there is not a lot more you could ask for in fishing. Over the years we have found honey-holes full of sheepshead, flats stuffed with flounder and trout, shallows swarmed by redfish, reefs covered in snapper and channels haunted by grouper. It is not uncommon to find golden-green snook gorging on bait fish under mangrove overhangs while bonnethead sharks herd bait-balls into their ambush zones.

Whether you are hunting ducks on the bay in the winter, or wade-fishing off a kayak in the summer, the bay can be both accommodating and intimidating for outdoor lovers. Over the years we have caught 200-pound tarpon, big bull sharks, barracuda, and some of the most aggressive cobia you can imagine while exploring our big bay, but despite all that success, to this day, we are still learning how to fish the bay.  

Most people think of a bay as a somewhat protected body of water and Tampa Bay is no different in that it loosely is shaped like a crescent. However, because of its size and contours, boaters can never forget that dangerous weather can whip the bay into an unforgiving body of water. We have left the dock at dawn running on glass-smooth seas through the Sunshine Skyway Bridge only to be forced back hours later fighting five-foot whitecaps that can teach you new Bible verses. Like I said the bay can be accommodating and intimidating to say the least.

Fishbrain Makes the Difference

Conditions on the bay are constantly changing and evolving in such a large ecosystem.  Weather, tides, fishing activity, species migration and moon phase are just some of the variables that can recalibrate where you should focus your location in such a vast body of water. The Fishbrain App allows you to rely on the most advanced algorithms and up-to-date data points available for anglers today.

With a population of almost 3.5 million people in the metropolitan area, Tampa Bay has become one of the most popular fishing areas in the Southeast. With year-round fishing accessible from piers, shorelines, docks and with over 100 boat ramps and marinas for boaters, Tampa Bay has is an angler’s paradise destination.  

To try and guesstimate the best way to fish over 400 square miles of water just does not make sense.  

Just open your Fishbrain App and you will see hundreds, if not thousands, of data points from fellow anglers who also rely on Fishbrain in the bay. The app itself will provide real-time feedback on hot-spots, and high-resolution imagery that can be the difference between fishing and catching.  

Tightlines –

T. Buck

This is the first chapter of a series of articles on Tampa Bay that will explore the intricacies of fishing one of the largest and most popular bodies of water in the United States.  In the future, we will dive into more detail on targeted species and strategies to fish the Ye Old Bay.