Captain’s Corner: Tyson Wallerstein

The Tampa Bay Times

Blazing hot weather with virtually no rain over the past three weeks has brought inshore water temperatures up into the mid to upper 80’s. When the water is this warm spots closer to deep water and current are your best bet for catching fish inshore.

 Snook anglers know that when the water gets hot its time to focus your efforts on structure. Rocks along causeways and jetties are snook magnets as are bridge pilings and fenders. Anglers will do best free-lining grunts  and pilchards during the day and bounce the bottom with a variety of jigs at night.

Tarpon can be caught along the beaches as well as most of the inlets right now. This past week we saw the big schools of fish start to come thru. With only a few days of offshore wind recently the beach bite has been hit or miss. Corked threadfins and pinfish have been producing when kept out in the lane of approaching fish. Be sure to have a few crabs on hand to cast at those schools of fish that stay in a general area and pop up every couple of minutes. This week’s new moon will bring us the big tides tarpon anglers love. Afternoon outgoing tides will have the crabs flushing from the bay, look for big schools of tarpon to be hanging around Egmont Key and Bean point. Free-lining crabs works best on the outgoing tides while chumming the fish to the boat with small pieces of fresh threadfins works well on the incoming tide.