Kingfish Offshore

Hit the water this weekend and head offshore for some great Kingfish action. The reports are coming in the early kings are being landed on the near shore reefs. Other action is starting to pick up inshore with the arrival of some of the Spanish Macks. Look for early tailing Reds on the grass flats around Desoto and up near Dunedin. Weather should be good and the fishing should be great.

FREE Fishing Weekend

The FWC has designated the weekend of April 5 and 6 as Free Fishing Weekend. Both residents and nonresidents can fish in public fresh waters across the state without a license. All other fishing rules apply (see MyFWC.com/Fishing).

Although its not soltwater you can still hit some great lakes within the state.

Tarpon Fishing Seminar tonight

Since Tarpon season is coming up shortly so to get ready you should start looking to update your tackle and skills. Here is one way to do the skills update.

Capt. Tommy Ziesmann, aka "Tommy Z" of Action Charters will present a free tarpon fishing seminar Wednesday, March 19, at 6:30 p.m. at Boater's World, 9931 Adamo Drive in Brandon, FL. Find out more info here.

Windy Weekend

Looks like this weekend is not the weekend to be out on the water. But with the time change tonight we should see some warmer weather and longer days so that next weekend could be a great fishing weekend. The Trout and Redfish should be back on over the next few days after this front blows through. BUT if your down here vacationing and wanting to fish. Stay off the Offshores since the seas are huge and they probably aren't running anyway and the inshore in protected water may be the best bet.

Tampa Fishing Inshore

Looks like a couple of friends made a few trips into the flats down near Desoto and the skyway area. They told me that it looked like a lot of fish were moving around in the shallows and near shell island the Mullet were swimming on top of large schools of RedFish. The trout were also biting pretty heavily on shrimp and gulps. Looks like I am going to have to make my way to the flats this weekend to see whats biting for myself. I also heard reports of Kings moving in on the closer artificial reefs.

Fishing is really starting to pick up

We hit the water Saturday Night out of Clearwater and decided to head to the Rube Allyn to see if the snapper bite might be on. Once there we started getting bites immediately the snapper where there and we started landing a few a couple of shorts and a few keepers. But the excitement came when we started hooking into the Goliath Grouper. We would start reeling in our little 40lb snapper rod rigs and then about 1-2ft off the bottom the pole would bend over and take us for a ride. They were monsters that we couldn't get turned and didn't have the gear to land one. So 3 times we broke off. We did however land about 5 Gags and 1 Red grouper of the 5 1 was keeper size but since we are out of season we let em all go. All in all a good quick trip we were back at the ramp by 9:30 and had a couple a snapper to fillet.