August 5, 2020
By: Bill Aucoin
RIVERVIEW, Fla.- Welcome to Angler Insider sharing the best spots and plots to catch fresh and saltwater gamefish each week in Central Florida.
The Brief
- Weather: Hot, humid. Afternoon storms
- Release all snook, redfish, and spotted seatrout south of Hernando/Pasco line.
- Keep up to five mangrove snappers 10 inches or longer.
- Keep up to five bass but only one 16 inches or longer.
- Keep up to 50 panfish of any length.
- Keep up to 25 crappie (speckled perch) per person.
- Covid-19: Keep distance, wash hands, etc.
Freshwater
Check for bream and bass early on weedy shorelines. When the bite stops back away and probe the slope to deeper water with vegetation producing more dissolved oxygen. Cast weedless lures – worms, frogs, minnows – into deeper shoreline vegetation. Fly fishers should cast schminnows and smaller flies. Strip them slowly. Moving water on lake chains, below docks, and in rivers are productive. Lake oxygen levels are low in the heat of the summer. Cast around floating vegetation which also produces dissolved oxygen and shade.
Saltwater
Baitfish are thick on the flats and so are mangrove snapper, seatrout, and ladyfish. Your best fish finder is a diving tern. Drift quietly into the zone casting a gold spoon. Fish it fast or slow, shallow or deep. Bigger seatrout are often hiding in grass watching for bait being swept in with incoming tides.
Big and small snook are crashing topwaters during stiff, falling tides. Fish early or late depending on tides in your area. Redfish are swimming with the mullet as usual. There are reports of schooled-up redfish moving across the flats. You’ll see the push. Big deal! Get in front of them and put a popper in the path. When the reds arrive, pop it. They’ll all try to eat it first.
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