We are on a full moon this weekend, the bite should be pretty good through the weekend and into the first part of the coming week thanks to the moon and the barometer moving around. Keep in mind the full moon makes for some strong tidal flows so the start of the tides are best, but you can get them chewing on the tail end too. During the peak of the tide it can be a little tougher to present your bait naturally and combat the current unless your in the shallows.
Trout right now are biting well around the passes and dock lines, especially at night around the lights. At night, the white soft plastic behind a 1/4oz jig head seems to be working well or a live shrimp with minimal weight. During the day, you can find plentiful trout on the grass flat edges and potholes. The live shrimp under a popping cork on the flats is a great idea, or a jerk bait or soft plastic. Remember, when working artificials or live bait once you find one trout there will be more in that vicinity typically.
Sheepshead bite is hot right now, as the water cools off and gets stirred up that really rings the dinner bell for the sheeps in our area. Great time to go after them around the docks, bridges, piers, jetties and seawalls using fiddler crabs, cut oysters, shrimp or clams or even barnacles for bait. I have seen some artificial fiddler crab jigs working but I would stick to live or dead bait making it easier to present right near the structure more readily available to these sporadic eaters.
Redfish bite is also on fire right now like the sheepshead and trout, especially around the Fort De Soto area and along the western shoreline of Tampa bay starting around Weedon Island. We are also seeing these guys moving near shore in big spawning aggregations still. The HUB, our private charter boat, got inundated with big redfish around 35ft of water this past week. Great time to get out there and try to find one of these huge schools of fish. Just please do your best to take care of these fish and release them in the water with minimal handling to ensure they can continue on their way near shore to spawn out the next generation of redfish. Right now, shrimp, pinfish and white bait seem to work well. Dock lines, mangrove shorelines, grass flats and more are all holding these redfish!
Snook right now are biting pretty well, there were a few days this past week that had some really good action before the full moon. We are still seeing some decent numbers around the passes and even on the beaches around the piers. However, up in the bay around the mouths of the bayous and rivers seem to be a little easier to find more numbers of fish. The white bait and live shrimp are best bets when they get fired up, but the soft plastic lures work well too. Snook are also being found around the dock lines, especially where water is moving, and bait is hanging out. The full moon has tides moving pretty good, so the start or end of the tide seems to work best.
Flounder are starting to bite better and better around the area. They love hanging out adjacent to the flats or structures like bridges or docks ambushing passing baits that venture too close to the bottom where they hide.
Whiting are biting well around the beaches and in the channels around the bays, they love the soft plastics on the bottom too or live shrimp weighted to bottom. Like sheepshead they don’t mind when the water gets murky.
