The snook are loading up the passes right now! from Pass a grille, to Blinds Pass to Johns pass the snook are choking up in the passes gearing up or ‘staging’ for their summertime near shore and beaches spawn. This week in the wee hours of the mornings you can spot huge schools of school hanging around the dock lights inside the passes. Thursday morning at Hubbard’s Marina as the 39-hour backed into the dock around 5:30am it sent white bait and snook in a frenzy as the prop wash stirred up the calm and still waters inside the pass and along the dock lines. J

ohn Sasser and Angelo Rivera were fishing this past week in very early morning well before sunrise working flairhawk style lures in the passes catching some nice snook. Working these lures on a heavy spinning rod with a reel with serious drag capacity and the capacity to hold plenty of 50-60lb braid is the best idea. Using a 60lb floro leader tied onto the end of the braid then to the lure is the best method for utilizing theses unique lures and the pink and chartreuse or just Chartreuse colors seem to be the high producers lately in the 1oz range. You want to cast these long around the jetties, piers and passes and slowly retrieve them over the bottom and then you will feel the thud of a lifetime as you hook up to one of these massive snook. Keep in mind however, snook, redfish and trout are all catch and release in our area until end of May 2020 so be sure to release them quickly and efficiently reducing any possible damage these fish may suffer.

The trout bite inside the pass and along the beaches continues to impress with many speckled trout following the flushing bait schools out of the pass to feed while they can. Mostly on the deep water drop offs inside the passes and the sandy gulleys that parallel the beaches and Live shrimp, or a DOA shrimp is a great bait to go after these speckled sea trout. Redfish or red drum have been a little fewer and further between around the pass lately, but we are seeing some caught at night around the dock lights in the pass right along the bottom slow retrieving soft plastic swim baits or zman style soft plastics with a light jig head.

The mackerel are still around the passes and on the beaches a bit too but they are definitely starting to thin out in the Johns Pass area as the waters continue to warm up and clear up. Tarpon are showing up in droves inside and around the passes eating ladyfish, big pass crabs, and even finger mullet as they flush through the passes. The big full moon tides this weekend should have the tarpon feeding very well this weekend as the big hill tides flush out all their natural prey from the passes. Early morning or around sunset at the mouth of the passes is a great place to target these ‘silver kings’ or drifting these live baits free lined around your boat as you drift through the pass is a great way to target them too! Tarpon seem to feed well at night too, many local guys catch them while targeting sharks when they aren’t using heavy wire or shark gear that is over sized and big dead baits on the bottom. They are opportunistic and they won’t shy away from big chunks of dead ladyfish, mullet and even fish carcasses each year we see a few of them hooked around our boats at Hubbard’s Marina when using carcasses for bait for the summertime lazy snook.