Vast flats make tunnel skiffs a good choice to fish from.

Apalachicola Bay is uniquely rich among Florida estuaries, made fertile with the muddy flow of the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers out of Georgia, which join at the Woodruff Dam to form the Apalachicola River. Because of the high nutrient load, the bay is one of the prime oyster-producers in the country, and all that energy also translates through the food chain to the gamefish.

Such productivity is generous in unexpected ways to anglers. The river and the bay are among the few waters to share a run of gulf-strain striped bass, native fish that reach weights of over 50 pounds. They’re most often caught far upriver, just below the dam where they congregate during their spring spawning runs, but some younger fish, to five pounds, also hang around the bridge and the docks in downtown Apalachicola, where they readily attack shrimp or jigs fished close to the pilings after sundown.

The true passes here, though, are on the south side of the bay. They start on the west end with Indian Pass, which cuts off St. Vincent Island from the Indian Peninsula about 10 miles west of the town of Apalachicola. It’s a narrow but deep cut, and the launching ramp here is subject to high-speed currents that can make reloading tricky. But you drop right into prime trout and redfish water; run around the corner to the north and you’re in 3-foot-deep Indian Lagoon, which is littered with oyster bars that nearly always hold a few reds and some jumbo trout. Or motor two miles east to Pickalene Bar, a rock and shell bar that juts almost a half-mile out into the bay. Fish the cuts through this bar as well as the point with shrimp, killifish or finger mullet and you’ll find the usual inshore suspects.

From Indian Key Pass, run west to the huge bar off Cape San Blas and you’re on one of Florida’s best spots for “bull” reds in fall; big schools of the giants come within casting distance of shore, and will attack just about anything, including big spoons and topwater plugs. The sure bet, though, is finger mullet. Freelined on the edges of the bar in calm weather, they’re just about sure to find a heavyweight drum of 30 pounds and up. You can also access the point from the beach—get a beach-driving permit at Port St. Joe first, though, and be aware that this beach is not hard like the beach at Daytona—it’s 4WD country, only. (You can park just off the pavement and walk to good sloughs, though.)

Wads of the reds sometimes come east into the pass, too; it’s a good spot to soak a chunk of cutbait on the bottom on outgoing tides this month. The same is true of St. Joseph Point, in the area of Channel Marker 24, where bait often attracts the schools. And both this point and all the beach between here and the cape are hot spots in October/November and again in April/May for catching pompano on 1⁄8- to 1⁄4-ounce bucktails hopped along bottom.

West Pass, which is actually the second-westernmost pass on the bay, has a small but dependable run of tarpon from June through September. Six-inch swimmer-tail jigs bounced with the tide do the job, though most are caught on live pinfish or mullet slabs fished on bottom. It’s a murky, deep pass with holes approaching 50 feet. Deepest water is at the narrowest section, just off Marker 7 on the St. Vincent Island shore. The tarpon could be anywhere here; fish where you see rollers, and if you don’t see them, try drifting through the hole with a 1- to 4-ounce breakaway jig a la the Boca Grande rig, or drift a similarly weighted live pinfish, finger mullet or crab near bottom. Big reds also sometimes show up in this pass, both in the deep water and along the long bar called East Bank, which has depths as shallow as two feet rising out of 20 feet of water on both sides. (Be careful when running out of this pass or Indian Pass; both have unmarked, migrating bars at their mouths, sometimes shallow enough to cause you to hit bottom in anything that draws more than a flats skiff.)

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