More clear water again this past week with the beautiful weather makes finding the bait fish and predatory fish you’re targeting very easy. However, it does make it a little more difficult to get the fish feeding if you’re using tackle that’s a little too heavy. Similar to last week the live bait like greenback and glass minnows has been thick around the area in the bays, passes and along the beaches. These schools are making lots of fish excited and ready to cooperate with local anglers.
The snook action has been very good yet again this week around the area. Lots of anglers are doing well in the wee hours of the morning fishing the outgoing tides in the passes using live pigfish, pass crabs or big live shrimp for the snook. The lures that worked well this week were the wind cheater hard jerk baits and the flair hawk style jigs for these early morning snook. The biggest snook love the big cut dead baits on the bottom but they are definitely a little fewer and further between than the around slot sized snook that seem to be the most prolific.
If you want to target snook and don’t have a boat, the best place to get a great shot at them is around the local passes like blinds pass, johns pass, pass a grille, or even a bridges around the bay! For example, Johns pass has had snook so thick around before sunrise its nuts as you can see in the video above. The outgoing tide flushes all the bait and shrimp out of the pass and the snook stack up in the pass waiting to ambush flushing prey. This makes it really easy to catch a few as long as you are presenting your live bait or lure very naturally in the strike zone near the areas the snook are hiding in the lee of the current near structure.
Redfish bite is going well around the area too. Lately around the passes the redfish bite has gone very well at night, but were still seeing a few during the day cruising the passes. Along the beaches, passes or in the bay along the flats you can sometimes spot a school of hungry fish moving along together and this makes it catching not fishing. Redfish are schooling up for their brief migration offshore a ways to spawn before returning to their home in the back bay waters. During the day time they are more likely found along the mangrove shore lines, grass flats or the edges of the oyster bars in the back bays. However, at night they seem to be hanging below the active snook in the passes. Inside Johns pass the past few nights many anglers have caught some respectable redfish on crabs along the bottom, live pinfish or big live shrimp. Keep in mind, redfish are primarily going to be feeding on or near the bottom while the snook are up higher in the water column or on the surface.
On the beaches the whiting action is still going very well and they are tons of fun to fight on lighter tackle. Luckily on the beach there’s nothing you have to worry about as far as structure so using ultra-light tackle still enables you to land some decent sized fish. Besides whiting on the beach, there’s plenty of mackerel cruise the surf around areas that have the live bait present. Lots of fun to happen upon a school of aggressive mackerel while fishing light tackle for whiting along our beautiful gulf beaches.
Mackerel are also very active around the local passes and piers! The skyway fishing piers, the bay and gulf piers of fort de soto and big pier 60 all are holding plenty of hungry and aggressive mackerel ready to attack any free lined green backs, shrimp or live pinfish into the current. My favorite set up for the mackerel is a longer 7-8ft rod to give me plenty of casting distance with a 7/8th-1oz gotcha plug with 10-15lb braid and a 20lb floro leader. You cast as far as you can up current and let the jig sink to the bottom then start to retrieve very fast and occasionally give a brief pause and light twitch before starting to retrieve quickly again. I start very fast and then if the fish aren’t cooperating I will slow down a bit and as soon as I get one to bite, the goal is to continue to replicate that speed and retrieve that was successful into enticing a bite.
Still pretty early for active sheepshead and heavy pompano action around the jetties and bridges locally, but they should be on the way soon as water temps continue to cool off a bit. Luckily, there’s still plenty of mangrove snapper around ready to devour any chummers that you toss into the current. Light tackle in the 10-20lb range and a piece of shrimp or green back is my favorite method for targeting these fun to catch and great eating aggressive snapper.
