July 22, 2020
By: Bill Aucoin
PASCO COUNTY, Fla. – Welcome to Angler Insider sharing the best spots and plots to catch fresh and saltwater gamefish each week in Central Florida.
Welcome to Angler Insider sharing the best spots and plots to catch fresh and saltwater gamefish each week in Central Florida.
The Brief
- Tropical winds and rains may cool water and change fishing patterns for the better.
- Saltwater tide slopes and depths are favorable.
- FWC asks anglers to report violations to its Wildlife Alert Reward Program.
- All snook, redfish, and spotted seatrout must be released south of Hernando/Pasco line.
- Keep up to five bass but only one 16 inches or longer.
- Keep up to 50 panfish of any length.
- Keep up to 25 crappie (speckled perch) per person.
- Covid-19: Keep distance. Wash hands. Don’t share lures, etc.
Freshwater
It’s July in Florida. It’s hot. You know the drill. Fish weedy shorelines early. It’s time to explore neighborhood ponds and no-wake lakes that don’t get fished. They hold bass and bream, of course, and some also have snook, tilapia, and little tarpon. (Don’t tell anybody.) Check out lakes in the Teneroc Fish Management Area east of Lakeland and the Edward Medard Reservoir near Plant City which is regularly stocked with sunshine bass and channel catfish.
Remote river stretches with good flow are good. Bass and snook face the current. Let them ambush your lure or fly as you slow-twitch it past their hidey-holes. Bluegills are huddled behind shallow water structures like upended tree roots.
Saltwater
Seatrout and redfish are following baitfish around deeper grass flats. Cast small twitch-baits. See nervous water or somebody netting bait? Bingo! A few Spanish mackerel are moving in with the baitfish, too. Troll flat lines along channel edges. Watch the sonar and fish all around underwater spoil islands, especially at low tides.
Post-spawn snook are feeding on grass flats. Cast walk-the-dog lures at night and at first light. As the sun rises, skip jigs around and under mangrove limbs and roots. At night, fish residential canal dock-lights. For tarpon, fish pilings and the shadow line below bridge lights.
To check the weather radar and forecast, please click here.
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