Captain Steven is finally drying out from the wet 4th of July weekend. On Monday we fished 8 hours in the rain and everyone had a blast. Gortex rain suits made for a comfortable trip on the water.
With water temperatures down 5 degrees and the air temperature at 75 it didn't feel like July at all. The day started gathering baits and what a mess I got myself into. A new crop of white baits have arrived and one toss of my cast net had hundreds of gilled juvenile baits all tangled in my net! The net looked like a Christmas tree and is one pain to clean. With bait finally on board it was time to get down to business.
First stop we chased redfish on the early high tide and the big red bruisers once again didn't disappoint. It was hard to sight fish so we blind casted the usual spots and sure enough they were ready to play. On holidays boat traffic can be fierce but with the rain we basically had local islands all to ourselves. The usual cut baits fished tight to the mangroves and oyster bars were the hot ticket.
The tide was coming off the flat so I ran to deeper water in search of trout, mackerel and bluefish. The first taker was a chunky spotted sea trout around 14" then another and another. We switched from live baits to DOA shad jerk baits silver in color on ¼ Mission jig heads and scored just as quickly.
The jig heads worked on the trout and woke up the mackerel. The Mack attack was fun but not the bigger 4-6 speedsters that have been in this area. We had a Tarpon slurp up crabs within 20' of the boat.
Captain Steven Markovich
www.onthemarkcharters.com
