A good Tampa fishing guide realizes that they key to his job is locating fish for his customers. This may sound like an obvious point however many guides target certain species, regardless of conditions. There will always be days during the year when these particular fish are less inclined to bite due to tide and/or weather. It is on these days that an experienced Tampa fishing guide will consider all of the possible target species out there. The small kingfish and large Spanish mackerel pictured above were caught on a day that was originally booked for redfishing. The redfishing had been slow on the days preceding this trip, so the captain suggested a trip to a near shore reef where the kingfish, Bonita and Spanish mackerel had been aggressively feeding. These customers indicated that they were game for whatever the captain thought was the best choice. The resulting trip produced almost non stop hook-ups on large Spanish mackerel and a few small kingfish as well as one large fish that emptied an outfit of most of its line and was never seen. The customers had a great day!

The day began by this Tampa fishing guide going out to the beach and securing about fifteen hundred small "whitebaits" or pilchards. These three inch baitfish are considered "candy' by almost anything that swims and by having this massive amount of bait, the guide was able to chum during the full course of the charter, which kept the target species swarming around the boat. Many casts were rewarded, within seconds, with a hooked fish. Another factor that added to the excitement was that, rather than trolling around and waiting for a fish to strike, these customers were actually casting to these fish and hooking them, giving them a much more active role in the fish catching process. To top it off, the guide was having these customers use standard inshore light tackle, making each encounter with these fish a real sporting battle. Multiple hook-ups were common on this trip.

Although every one of these customers would have immensely enjoyed battling a 15 lbs snook along the beach or a 10 lbs redfish back in the mangroves, that scenario was determined to be low probability by the Tampa fishing guide on that day, and, as you can see from the smiles, no one was disappointed with the alternative. Bending rods is the name of the game and a good Tampa fishing guide will always keep this in mind.