PINELLAS COUNTY, FL. – Welcome to Angler Insider sharing the best spots and plots to catch fresh and saltwater gamefish each week in Central Florida.
Welcome to Angler Insider sharing the best spots and plots to catch fresh and saltwater gamefish each week in Central Florida.
The Brief
• Weather: Drier, cooler, breezier.
• Moon: Harvest Moon Oct. 1.
• Bass: Keep up to five but only one 16 inches or longer.
• Panfish: Keep up to 50 of any length.
• Crappie: Keep up to 25.
• Mangrove snapper: Keep up to five 10 inches or longer.
• Flounder: Keep up to ten 12 inches or more.
• Spanish mackerel: Keep up to three, 12 inches or longer.
• Release snook, redfish, and spotted seatrout south of Hernando/Pasco line.
• It’s okay to keep one snook between 28-33 inches if caught north of Hernando/Pasco line.
• Revive gamefish before releasing them.
• Covid-19: Keep distance, wash hands, don’t share lures.
Saltwater
It’s officially autumn. Right on cue, water and air temperatures are lower and flats-prowling gamefish got the memo. Eat up. Target redfish for the best test-your-leader, test-your-knot fight. If you can’t find them, let them find you: cast a hunk of cut bait on a circle hook. When a redfish sucks it up and starts to swim away, do not set the hook. Just reel in the slack and hang on.
Snook and seatrout are aggressively pouncing on topwaters. For snook, walk it back with the current near mangrove shorelines. Cast toward nervous surface water. That’s usually a school of baitfish and seatrout are nearby.
Freshwater
September and October are two of the best bass catching months on Central Florida lakes and rivers like the Kissimmee Chain and the Winter Haven Chain. Small to medium bass are feeding in moving water. Fan-cast floater/diver lures over shell beds and in canals linking lakes. Fish the reverse current where rushing creeks empty into lakes. Move into creeks and cast weedless soft plastics upstream, retrieving them past ambush points. Back out on the lake, the biggest bigmouths are still tucked into hydrilla and eel grass for cover, shade, and oxygen. But when the sun goes down, cast weedless jerkbaits and frogs to entice lunkers along grassy and lilypad shorelines.
To check the weather radar and forecast, please click here.
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