Fishing with Capt. George Tunison | Trout are biting, but beware red tide

If your eyes are itchy and you aren’t catching fish in a normally productive area, you just might be in a location bothered by a red tide bloom. Usually associated with hot weather, red tide blooms can occur any time of year as they are now. The FWC reported medium to high concentrations this past week off Lee and Collier counties.

Trout are scattered but biting well on traditional cork and live shrimp presentations. Casters are scoring using ultra-lites and soft plastic paddle tails. If you’re using your snook outfit for trout fishing you are way over equipped. A 5 to 6-foot ultra-lite or lite action rod allows you to better enjoy the fight. Eight-pound braid and 10 to 15-pound fluorocarbon leaders also allows long casts and nearly invisible retrieves. Adding commercial scents like Pro-Cure ups your game. Lots of trout reports are coming from the Pirate Harbor area as well as deeper water sections throughout Pine Island Sound. Drift around areas off the fishing shacks or Captiva Rocks for action. A killer combo is a float with a 2.5-inch DOA shrimp dangling below. With this warm spell upon us, don’t neglect your favorite top-water plug in 4 feet of water or less for big trout as well as suspending twitch baits slowly worked through the water column.

Sheepshead are biting on local inshore structures, near shore reefs and oyster bars. Shrimp and oyster bits as well as fiddler crabs fished on ultra-sharp hooks get the job done. Use the lightest line you can get away with for more bites in winters clearer waters. For fun try walking a plastic fiddler crab around your favorite bridge bottom. These larger fakes can often draw strikes from bigger sheepies although hooking can be tricky.

Lucky Sarasota Bay anglers are reporting rather large schools of catchable redfish while our local bite consists of mostly scattered rat red-sized specimens around docks and other woody cover when the tide allows. Up river anglers are catching not only snook but slot and over-slot redfish in the warmer waters east of the railroad trestle and I-75 bridges. Some of the year’s biggest jacks (over 20 pounds) move upriver this time of year and it’s not uncommon to see massive schools of these tough-as-nails fighters massed in the shallows just east of the I-75 Bridge. If jacks jumped during the fight would they be the ultimate gamefish?

While up river, check out dark mud flats just off mangrove shorelines during sunny day cold snaps to see monster snook belly to the mud absorbing the suns energy. Downriver local creek shorelines will also host jumbo females sunning themselves and are often mistaken for downed tree limbs with anglers casting near and around them “looking for a bite” only to be surprised when the log comes to life and swims away. Snook have enough trouble surviving the cold water period so it’s best to enjoy the sight of a truly huge specimen and simply leave them alone.

If you believe local forecasts for the upcoming weekend weather such as 85 degrees and little to no wind, then make plans to be offshore chasing snapper and grouper. Although lane and mangroves have been reported in closer to the coast, you’ll find much bigger specimens out at the 150-foot and beyond mark. Quite a few cobia reports by those traveling offshore but of mostly smaller fish and the same with sighted tripletail.

With a good crappie bite still going on this year, largemouth bass anglers are also ready to get in on the freshwater action as bass are fanning shoreline nests in preparation for their spawn. Many saltwater flats anglers taking a day to fish largemouths in local lakes or over at Lake O are surprised to see high tech metalflake bass rockets being propelled through the shallows by push-poles. Nothing is quieter or more stealthy than poling.

Capt. George Tunison is a Cape Coral resident fishing guide. You can contact him at 239-579-0461 or via email at captgeorget3@aol.com.