Tarpon fever is its on kind of incurable virus and many of us have had it for several decades and still function semi-normally. I opened the curtains very early this morning to see baby tarpon rolling behind my house and within the blink of an eye was standing on the seawall in green boxers and red plaid slippers casting jigs while doing the dawn, humid morning, no-see-um two step swat and shuffle, trying not to get eaten alive, which for some reason drew loud snickers from passing joggers. They just don’t understand tarpon fever.

From backyard canals to Boca Grande Pass, it’s tarpon time!

With lots of baitfish in the water, flashy whitebait profile lures like MirrOlure’s classic MirrOdine have been hot this past week along mangrove shoreline travel routes as snook move to the beaches for an all summer long fling.

Redfish love the plentiful baitfish as well and are chewing on well-presented twitch bait look-a-likes along the bushes.

Baitfish profile streamer flies in white with some flash tied in, also equipped with a light mono weed guard, are great along the mangroves, cast right onto the branches and left to fall naturally to the surface. If a big one is lurking close by, usually the first strip or two of the fly line will trip his trigger.

Make sure you tie suspending twitch baits and most flies to your leader with a good loop knot. Let the fish tell you what they want by increasing or decreasing your retrieve speeds and pauses till you establish a pattern. The idea is to make twitchers look like a disoriented, wounded, easy meal snack on its last fin, flashing and darting using subtle twitches of the rod tip.

If you’re a cast-and-keep-moving type of shoreline angler, you might not have the patience to fish twitch baits effectively. You need a run-and-gun search lure that can be cast far, retrieved fairly fast and can cover water. Yes, it’s the dumbest lure in your box, the old reliable spoon. With gold color in stained water and chrome nearer the beach, spoons definitely catch snook and reds along shorelines and open area potholes.

Use a high quality, small swivel to minimize line twist and a 36-inch leader of 30 to 40-pound test fluorocarbon. If you see your spoon spinning, slow down your retrieve speed. The spoon needs to wobble and flash, never spin. Using a long limber rod and braid, you can cast a spoon into the next county and cover lots of water quickly and efficiently looking for active fish.

In the shallows during low light conditions hungry snook fall for topwater plugs and a leg long snook exploding on your zig zagging Zara Spook in the early morning quiet will always be remembered.

Matching the hatch is a good starting point when it comes to lure and fly selections. When I’m throwing a top water plug before sun up, I’m usually throwing a very large one.

A 7-pound trout or 36-inch snook have no problem inhaling a 10-inch mullet. If you believe the theory that big fish are lazy and prefer one big bite to chasing French fries around, then by all means, pull out your biggest top water and go to work.

On foot snookers are gearing up for pre-dawn beach patrol for surf snook. Casting parallel to the shoreline from ankle to knee deep water often works best.

The classic white bucktail jig and white soft plastics are hard to beat for daytime beach duty, but if you can stand the bugs, throwing that jumbo top water at night in the 3-foot zone just might produce the beach snook of a lifetime.

Most times nothing beats freshly netted live baitfish for consistent snook fishing, although over the years all my personal best snook fell to lures.

Covering with a mask at crowded ramps is good sense.

Capt. George Tunison is a Cape Coral resident fishing guide. Contact him at 239-282-9434 or captgeorget3@aol.com.