Saturday me and my Bud Keith wanted to do some exploring so we decided to go to Cockroach Bay. We have never fished that area so we studied up on google earth the day before, we noticed a nice sand bar that runs parallel with the coast. We got there early before the tide started coming in and fished the outside of the bar. It didn't take long to find them because it was real shallow and we could see them pushing. We kept spooking them so we decided to park the boat and wade. A few minutes later it was on, I picked up this 24" on a gulp swim bait.
We managed to catch 5 more before we lost the school due to the to all the boat traffic. They we're doing a clean up for the TAMPABAY WATCH and airboats were everywhere. We headed to the backwaters and caught a handful of trout before we called it a day. It is a very beautiful area and I can't wait to get back out there!
Mike
Great job. I lived up in Ruskin for about a year and never fished that area.
We went back out there yesterday and only caught trout, the wind was howling from SW and it made it hard to located the reds. Still a bad day of fishing is better then a good day at work 🙂
From Cockroach down to around Port Manatee used to be our favorite fishing area when we'd come over from Lakeland.
My dad used to fish Cockroach a lot back in the 50s and 60s. He and three of my uncles went down there one weekend and set up camp on a small island. They were gonna stay out for a couple of days and load up on fish. One of those quick summer storms came up as they were setting up camp. They started hearing this loud noise, sounded like all the jets at MacDill firing up. One of my uncles yelled "Grab a tree!". Dad says he hit the ground and held on to a big palm tree, then watched a waterspout form in the bay about 50 yards away and head right at them. When he stood up there was nothing on that island over 3 feet high! They found their little aluminum boat about a half mile away and some of their other stuff scattered between there and camp. He hasn't been to keen on camping on the islands since then!
