St. Vincent Island to Steinhatchee
Includes Apalachicola, St. George Island, Carabelle, St. Marks and Keaton Beach

July 3-6

Hot weather, red snapper and the 4th!

Inshore:

Flounder are bycatch along oyster bars. There are so many inlets around us that flounder are tough to target on hook and line. We’re target them by gigging at night, but bookings are slim for these trips.

Tripletail are hit and miss, off the peak. A lot more free floater tripletails on the outside beaches, and they’ll pop up right beside you so keep a look out around Little St. George Island and St. Vincent Island.

Trout in the grass beds, occasional redfish. Pompano is quiet, there are a few, but it’s not a big schooling kind of bite.

Tarpon outside of Indian Pass, Little St. George, and today is SCALLOP season opening, so Port St. Joe Bay would be your place to go. St. Theresa in Appalachee Bay has ‘em too.

We’re in the early summer pattern. We have still had some pretty good days but also some down right slow ones especially after the sun gets hot during midday. On the good days the early morning bite for speckled trout has been good using soft plastic baits such as Gulp!, Calcutta, Strike King etc. using varying colored plastics according to the water clarity and color with ¼ - ½ oz lead heads reeling in a slow to medium erratic pattern, keeping the bait from touching the bottom. We’ve been going out at day break and usually catching most of our fish before 10:00 am. Try fishing the grass flats of Yents Bayou, Marsh Island, Goose Island (bayside SGI), Pilots Cove and Higgins Shoal (bayside Little SGI) and Lanark Village and eastward toward St. Teresa for speckled trout, silver trout and an occasional redfish cruising the grassy flats. We have also been having varying (one day good, next day not) success using live bait and plastic grubs while using a popping cork such as the old fashioned, lead free, red and whites and the Cajun thunder type

East Pass and Bob Sikes Cut are the places you need to be if you want to target big shark! The sharks are here for the tarpon. Fish the deeper holes near the edge of the channel using big baits 6-10 inch wounded or dead bait (we use mullet, whiting and big pinfish) with heavy sinkers and multi strand metal leader to fish the mid to lower water column.

Tarpon are still entering into our local waters! Large bait pods are in the area waters, some stretching miles near shore Gulf waters with large hand sized LY’s aka pogeys. Tarpon sightings are more frequent now with schools of 15-20 rolling at the top of the water (no telling how many are underneath the water!) as they shower the bait pods in the Apalachicola Bay and outside beaches of Dog Island, Little St. George and St. Vincents Island. The tarpon numbers will continue to multiply in the next couple of weeks as peak is about mid July. Fish for our monster tarpon using live LY’s or Bomber type hard plastic baits in varying colors. Last year there were many tarpon caught in our area waters. Average weights were 100 lbs but some tipping the scales at 175-200 lbs. My best advice: prepare for the big ones with proper fishing equipment. If you do hook up, drink lots of fluids. Those rascals fight forever!

Offshore: Of course folks are tearing up the red snapper, and having a lot of fun in the limited season for them. But watch the weather.

Baits to use are live pinfish or blue runners as well as a variety of frozen bait such as cigar minnows, squid, goggle-eyes, LY’s or Spanish sardines. Expect to catch grouper, snapper, triggerfish and a variety of reef dwellers. King mackerel, cobia and sharks are holding in mid to upper water depths and they can spool a reel in no time! We are flat lining a frozen cigar minnow on the upper water column while bottom fishing for bottom dweller. We like that two for one deal that we get when doing both. Around here during this time of year it beats trolling hands down. Expect good offshore fishing and it should only get better as the waters warm in waters 40 to 120 feet in depth. Expect to lose a few of your catch to the loads and loads of shark (and barracuda) that have been cruising the reefs and wrecks. It is not unusual to catch several shark in a day’s time while fishing for any offshore species fish.

Please help us preserve our natural resources by being a responsible angler.

Be safe and tight lines!

By Sandra Allen | www.bookmeacharter.com | Contact Us

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