Fly Tide Charters

February has been a whirlwind. Weather all over the place, fish scattered here, there, but not over there. Our Waterman tournament last weekend was a huge success. Huge thank you to all the sponsors and anglers especially for always sponsoring the team of myself and the homie . Tampa Bay is a special place and it takes every one of us to keep it that way. The Cruise Port plan took a giant hit, but we’re still not done fighting against that “Clown Proposal”. Looking forward to the rest of 2026 and hopefully these are the last mornings we see temperatures in the 40’s lol.

Mark with a good one during the warm up. Tampa Bay was fortunate not to see any or a very small amount of dead fish due to the cold weather a few weeks ago. Big thanks to the sun for shining during those colder days. Water is now back up to 70+ degrees and everyone is happy about it.

If you haven’t heard, there is a proposal to build a massive cruise ship port right on top of the Terra Ceia AQUATIC PRESERVE. This proposal is estimated to destroy roughly 330 acres of Mangrove Habitat. just released their annual Tampa Bay Habitat Report Card. There is a ton of great information in there that the team at TBEP works very hard to put together, I encourage everyone to read all of it. In that report, they have certain stated goals for the Tampa Bay Watershed. One of those goals is Mangrove Habitat acreage, a goal for 2030 and a goal for 2050. The goal for 2030 is above 15,300 acres (see slide 2). Tampa Bay currently sits at 15,438 acres. This mega cruise ship proposal is so big it would put us behind the 2030 goal by 162 acres! The 5th largest open water estuary in the country would be set back from an obtainable goal by 1 company looking to profit off its destruction. We are still early in this fight, meeting dates/times have not been set, I know a lot of you want to get involved (thank you all) and you will be. Once those meetings are set we will share them and let you know the best course of action to help fight against this proposal. As for now, vocal opposition is the best way you can help. Share posts, talk to your friends and family, get educated on the situation, this is a marathon not a sprint. I encourage all of you to sign the petition we have in the page bio. I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it, we have to fight this like we fought against last years proposal to turn our Florida State Parks into resorts and golf courses. Although a lot of times it doesn’t feel like it, we do have a voice and if enough of us use them, the better the outcome will be. 📸

Redly #20 this past Saturday with my guy . Big thanks to for always putting together a great tournament and supporting us .

I’ve fished Mike for years. We’ve had many banner days, we’ve had days we probably want to forget. But those days you want to forget, but never do, make fish like this worth every minute.

Thankful for high tides during cloudy windy day. Jay with a nice Tampa Redfish with extra spots.