Captain Zach Zacharias

Numerous rainshowers over the past several days have moderated water temperatures but they are still very hot.The new moon tides have sent the midday highs way up in the 3.0 range, and I have always had a tough time getting on hot bites with those tides. The best time to fish would probably be late in the afternoon and early evening when the big tides are screaming out.

Young Jack Barnett, from London, England, bested his dad, Bill, and grandad, Jim, by landing trout, snapper, grouper and ladyfish on a half day outing Thursday morning. The six-year-old’s best catches were a 22-inch sea trout and a 15-inch mangrove snapper fishing in N. Sarasota Bay and the Longboat Pass area. All of our catch was taken using average sized white bait, Spanish sardines, and very small pinfish.

Bait has been very plentiful and spans a wide variety of species and sizes. The stormy weather has been challenging. While the clouds, light rains and stealthy breezes have made for comfortable conditions on the water, there have been times when the benign conditions blow up into high winds, lightning and heavy rain. The big problem is that the weather pattern has been very random with weather coming in any time of the day or night. The persistent southwest wind flow has kicked the Gulf up to where it is not very comfortable for the small boat angler.

Captain Larry McGuire

Best action this week was on big red grouper and American red snapper. Our parties are also catching gag grouper ,scamp, mangrove snapper, yellowtail snapper, amberjacks, a variety of sharks and barracudas. Best bite has been out past 120 feet. Large live baits have been working best for the grouper and amberjacks. Cut bait, squid and frozen sardines are great for the snappers. Unfortunately, red snapper will be out of season Aug. 1 until June 1, 2009.We had a great two months fishing for them. Another great target this time of year is sailffish. One of our parties hooked up one last week and we saw another one free jumping. A few weeks ago in one of our local tournaments, there were a lot of billfish caught.If we concentrated only on billfish we would catch a lot more of them. I would suggest trolling starting at 100 feet and fishing out around 125 miles would be insane.

Captain Terry Frankford

Russ and Susie Bolton headed out for a late afternoon trip. We beat the heat and after a little work, found some great action. The last spot I went was near a pass with good moving tidal waters flowing over a large grass flat. We fished the edge of the grass flat where it met with a drop off into a deeper area of sand with a little grass. I believe what happen was the current swept unwary bait such as shrimp and small crabs into this deeper area. There were small white bait at the edge of the drop off. Starting with shrimp, we picked up a few small species – not much to write home about. Russ then used a small pinfish about the size of a half dollar. To make a long story short, on these pinfish we put one nice trout, two nice redfish, and five mangrove snapper to 15 inches in the box. All this action was in the last 45 minutes of the trip. We did run out of the couple dozen pins, went back to shrimp and ended up catching smaller fish again. I have caught plenty of good fish using shrimp, however, pins beat them out this trip for sure. It’s not a bad idea to change up on baits every now and then.

It may not have been the backwater flats vision that many anglers want when fishing Florida, however, a seawall with old torn down docks, vacant lots and hotels in the distance did produce some great action. Dan Giordano with sons Chris, and Mikey flipped shrimp around the structure and had a blast. Several species were caught, but the big fish stories were Dan's cuda that was close to 24 inches. What a battle on 10-pound test line near structure using a mono leader. I can't believe he landed it. The second and most exciting was a nine-pound black drum. This fish took Dan back into the piles twice before it reached the landing net. I really thought a couple times he just wasn't going to stop it, however, he persisted, and won.

Lobster season opens

The Florida spiny lobster sport season begins Aug. 6 and runs through March 31. The individual bag limit is six lobsters per person per day, and lobsters must have a carapace longer than three inches, measured in the water. A recreational saltwater license and a crawfish permit are needed for harvest, and possession and use of a measuring device is required.