Tarpon-
Boca Grande Pass-With the water temperatures staying cooler than normal the bite has been iffy. When they do turn on though the action is incredible. The best bite is coming on free lined crabs during the out going tides. Start you drift at the head of the fleet, shut down your gas engine, pitch the crabs into the fish and hold on! Once you reach the end of the drift, fire up, go around the fleet on the outside and do it again. If you run your boat through the fleet in this situation you are going to rile up the other anglers, but worse than that you are going to end up with a wad of line on your prop.

During the other tides jigs or live crabs fished near the bottom are getting bit, though the bite is somewhat slow. In this situation you want to use your engines to keep your boat moving at the same speed as the current flow. You can tell your doing this right by how your lines are positioned. Keep the lines straight under the boat.

Beach- If you can find a pod of fish that haven't been chased and get a crab close to them it will get eaten. I like to cruise down the beach and when I see rolling fish, set up so that a quiet drift intersects with the fish. If you run your motors too close you will send them gray hounding up the beach. If you see another boat working a pod of fish, set up so that your quiet drift will intersect with them. Do not run up on the other boat or the fish, you just screw it up for everyone.

There are also good reports of a good bite coming from Tampa around the Skyway and other bridges.

Snook- The snook are in their summer pre-spawn patterns. You will find them bunched up very close to the passes. Find a deep water mangrove line, or a flat with some structure, there will be a wad of fish somewhere close by. These fish are eating when there is a good current flow. Live bait is the choice here.

Red fish- They are schooling up nicely on the low tides out on the flats. Look around the oyster bars during the low tides. Once the tide gets high enough they seem to be moving into the cover of the mangroves. When they get like this I like to set up where I can get a bait up under the trees and just wait out the fish. Cut bait, or live bait both work well here. Attach a small weight to your line to keep your bait up under the trees.

In other news. Thanks to the crew from Central Florida Fishing Report for coming down and spending a day of chasing fish with me. You guys were a pleasure to have on the boat and I look forward to our next outing.

Get out and go fishing, it's good for what ails you!
Captain Tim Mills
http://www.dhatldoit.com
941-270-6172