Best fishing comes early and late in the day
You can feel the transformation from spring to summer on the water. The temperature of the inshore waters has risen to the point where we are experiencing some days of pretty slow bites during the mid day. These are the days with the slow out going tides during the hottest part of the day. When we are on our strong incoming tides during mid day the fish are more active and easier to entice. Fishing wasn’t all bad, the morning hours gave some good opportunities then again late in the afternoon. Also going into the weekend we are on some big high afternoon tides that should make for good fishing.
Again this week tarpon was the top priority for many anglers and I got to think the majority of them headed to Boca Grande Pass. For good reason there is a lot of fish there although not always easy to catch and often a zoo. The early morning incoming tides gave anglers the best opportunities jig fishing for the big poons in the deep holes of the Pass. By mid morning many of the fish were moving up into Charlotte Harbor and on to the hill. Live bait fishing with atlantic thread herring, pilchards and small crabs was the best tactic for hooking the schooling fish inside the Pass. Early in the week most of the fish dropped out of sight by high noon or dropped back into the holes of the Pass. Going into this past weekend the strong outgoing hill tides should have tarpon slurping crabs flushed out the Harbor in the afternoons.
Fishermen that preferred to get away from the crowd and play the relax and wait game for tarpon found fish between Cabbage Key and Cayo Costa and near Fosters Point between Redfish and Captiva Passes. Ladyfish, catfish tails and dead shad fished on bottom were the best baits. You can expect to catch loads of little sharks and catfish unless you are using catfish tails for bait. The best way to prevent catching catfish is to use the tail of one for bait, and tarpon love the nasty things.
Snook were again caught on the beach this week but not in the numbers as last week. Anglers are finding schools of small male snook averaging about 22-inches with one or two large females hanging around the little guys. They were biting live pilchards, pearl colored redfish magic shad tails and white and green deceiver flies.
For redfish there were not a lot of reports and those that did only found one or two here and there. Redfish up to 21 inches were caught along with good size mangrove snapper in some of the deeper creeks in Ding Darling. One redfish measuring 30 inches was caught on my boat this week at the north end of Matlacha Pass and that’s the only red we caught. There was also a report of several upper slot reds caught in Buzzard Bay on the northeast side of Matlacha Pass on the high water.
The trout bite has been tough for some and good for others. Several anglers report good action on fish averaging sixteen to eighteen inches around Ding Darling and the MacKeever Keys areas. They were going for live thread herring in four to six feet of water over patchy grass bottom. Trout were also reported in the holes around the bars on the eastern side of Charlotte Harbor near Burnt Store Marina and on the western side in front of Bull Bay.
Offshore, anglers are finding plenty of amberjacks averaging near twenty pounds over deep water structure beginning at about 80 feet. Mangrove snapper and a few big yellowtail were caught at about the same depth and a few good size grouper were caught in as shallow as sixty feet. Also there are schools of Spanish mackerel working bait pods along the coast and a few kings; they may be just of the beach or out several miles. There also is still a good supply of tarpon of Knapp’s Point of Sanibel when the weather conditions allow anglers to comfortably target them.
Summer is getting close and school shuts down for the kids this week. Think back to when you were a kid how cool it was to get on the water and the fun you had. Get the kids to turn of the television, games and text me ssaging and get them out there to experience all the great things nature offers us right in our back yard.
If you have a fishing story or photo that you would like to share or for charter information, please contact me at (239)283-7960 or visit us at www.fishpineisland.com. Have a safe week and good fishin’.