Tampa & Pass-A-Grille Fishing Guide

While snook, snapper and other fish have been spotty this year, the flounder have taken center stage. With a long Thanksgiving weekend, I spent several mornings at The Merry Pier in Pass-A-Grille fishing for these tasty bottom dwellers. Flounder are ambush predators, lying on the sandy bottom waiting for prey to venture too close. They’ll take shrimp, whitebait, greenbacks, small pinfish and slow moving jigs. Saturday was a banner day, with 8 keepers, the smallest at 15″ and the largest around 22″. A few pictures:

And, of course, my brother Allen got the biggest one:

My buddy Tim nailed a 30″ oversized redfish:

With grouper season winding down, Kevin, Dick and I had planned an offshore trip for Saturday. We were going to hit wrecks and ledges for amberjack and grouper, but… Saturday morning, winds were steady from the North at 15 knots, so we decided not to chance it in a 22′ boat. We ended up fishing the islands just North of Sand Key Pass, catching trout and flounder (although the redfish remained elusive). The afternoon turned out perfect, with high 70′s and sunshine – all in all, a great day on the water.

Sunday, I hit the Merry Pier for flounder. They were cooperative! I ended up with 4 nice keepers in a couple hours using big live shrimp. They were also hitting greenbacks and root beer jigs. Between all the fisherman, I saw at least a couple dozen legal fish landed. Miss Pass-A-Grille arrived with a boatload of big grouper and Key West grunts- and that was just a half day trip!

So, the end result – 4 flounder and a pound of stone crab claws, compliments of Cap’t Dick: