This week’s fishing around John’s Pass has been a little tougher with the warmer water, but the night bite has still been going well. We have seen the snook and redfish biting well around the docks inside Johns pass. Smokey, our all day first mate, and Myself, Capt Dylan Hubbard, caught a few nice snook and a upper slot redfish off the dock Thursday morning using pinfish for bait under the dock around four thirty am with hand lines. The local snook guru, Mr. John Sasser, reported he had a tough week for snook catching only landing one big one that was photo worthy but he did say he had caught a few more that just weren’t worth taking photos. He loves using the chartreuse and pink rattlehawk flairhawk jigs from the north jetty of Johns Pass right at the start or end of the incoming tides.

The trout have been around the pass too! Out on the beaches they are catching the speckled trout in the sandy troughs running parallel to the beach as they are hunting down the live shrimp along the beach and the small whitebait moving along the shore. The night time has the trout stacked up in the dock lights around the area too, especially with the new moon there’s not much light around other than the dock lights. Due to this, the bait and predators alike stack up in the dock lights, bridge lights and any area that can shed some light on the situation. Great time to get out there and hit the lights at night during the full moon, especially the residential canals near the passes. One of my favorite areas is around blinds pass the little points and pockets inside that pass hold some serious fish on their docklights, but the same is true around pass a grill, Clearwater and Johns Pass too. Flounder have been around but they are fairly few and far between right now in the area. We still have tarpon around for now, they typically will hang around until September. Most of the time you can find them in the passes at night or heading out of the pass around sunrise then they will move up and down the beaches during the day in small schools around 50-100 yards from shore hunting for mullet, crabs, and big white bait like threadfins.

Mangrove snapper are thick around the bay, passes and shorelines where they can find structure to hide out around and ambush the prey that passes by in the current. Great time of year to hit the bridges, jetties or docks close to the passes to chum up a cloud of these aggressive and good eating mangrove snapper on some light tackle.