The good news is the weather patterns are stabilizing for a couple days, so the chance of thunderstorms on the water will be down. The bad news is the tropics are heating up, so boaters need to pay attention to the forecast.
Fishing is status quo from last week. Hot water has cooled off the bite. The best opportunities to find some fish is early in the mornings when the flats are the coolest. A noisy topwater plug like a Rapala Skitter Walk, Heddon Super Spook or MirrOlure Top Dog will pique interest, if the floating grass isn’t too thick. If it is, try a jerk bait rigged with a worm hook or a weedless plug like the DOA PT-7s.
Once the sun gets up overhead, moving to deeper water is advised. Bounce a Sureketch tout or DOA shrimp or CAL shad slowly along the bottom in depths of 8 feet or greater. Trout, sea bass, flounder and Spanish are the likely targets. Be sure to slowly approach and cast around any objects like crab trap floats or big mats of grass. A tripletail may be lurking nearby.
Redfish are scattered but still coming to the net on Aqua Dream spoons mainly. Gold is the standard, although pink works well in tannin-stained water. Silver or chartreuse get the nod in clear. Reds will also take any lure intended for trout, but the spoons cover a lot of water and look enticingly like a scuttling crab, one of their favorite morsels.
Another option with the heat is run-and-gun after bait schools in the nearshore depths (15 feet and deeper). Watch for showering bait, jumping fish or diving birds to pinpoint the action. Small silver casting spoons with a trace of light wire leader will trick Spanish mackerel, jacks, bluefish, ladyfish and maybe even some small king mackerel. Stop and drift or use the trolling motor to get within casting range of the bait or you’ll put everything down.
There are plenty of sharks around for a real tussle on live bait. You might even get some jumps out of a cooperative silver king (tarpon) with a lively pinfish soaked in deeper holes early before the boat traffic picks up.
Scallops are reportedly thinning out some, but the ones still out there are big and fat. Amberjack season opens in Gulf state waters on August 1, so that’s another species for offshore enthusiasts to target now that red snapper has closed.
Right now winds are expected to be moderate from the west or northwest. That’s subject to change based on the storm’s track and intensity. Early bird anglers will find dead low tides right at dawn or first light, with almost two feet of incoming water by early afternoon. With Monday’s full moon, the flow will be strong. The solunar tables are calling for high feeding activity for an hour either side of the afternoon high tides.
Copyright 2020, Capt. Dave Lear. All rights reserved.