July 29, 2020
By: Bill Aucoin
TAMPA, Fla. – Welcome to Angler Insider sharing the best spots and plots to catch fresh and saltwater gamefish each week in Central Florida.
The Brief
- Monitor the tropical system approaching the U.S. It could be a game changer.
- 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. Don’t share lures, etc.
Saltwater
Snook are moving around schools of finger mullet in shallow grass. Get out and wade, throwing a weedless jerk bait into the swirls. Big snook are on shorelines or nearby in deeper water. Work up-current, parallel to the shoreline, casting a big, suspending twitch bait.
Baitfish have spawned out by the zillions. Fish nervous water on deep grass-sand flats. Fish a small gold spoon or suspending twitch bait where sand meets grass. You may also catch (and you can keep) mangrove snappers. Delicious.
Redfish are in deep grass, too, but following schools of big mullet and sucking up grass shrimp, crabs, and baitfish stirred up by mullet.
Freshwater
Rain and more rain is filling up lakes and rivers, cooling the water and spurring more shoreline action. Cast spinner baits, plastic worms, and poppers into bass and bream hot spots. If action stops, move out and fish the dropoff. Keep another rod ready to cast a topwater toward schooling bass chasing bait. And, of course, throw a heavily-weighted plastic worm around, into, and through hydrilla carpets. Even lunkers have to eat sometimes.
Kissimmee Chain lakes are rain-swollen. The Corps is keeping locks open so bass are just downstream, feeding on the shell beds. Drift and bump a lipped lure on the hard bottom. Fish the drop off, too.
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