We’ve been looking at the same weather pattern for the past several weeks. Namely southwest winds and afternoon thunderstorms. The thunderstorms can dump lots of fresh water in a very little time. Lots of fresh water can make finding pogies more difficult and fishing for tarpon and sharks more problematic. Nonetheless, despite ample amounts of rain there have been good catches of black and red drum, flounder and sea trout. Best action for seatrout has been on or near beach fronts. There have been several reports from the pier at Tybee of plenty of action for black drum seatrout and flounder. Later in the week a weak cold front pushed through, changing the wind direction and triggering a strong bite.

Tides will be decreasing during the week. Conventional wisdom says this is best time for fishing. Not necessarily so. Moving water is critical for good inshore fishing. When you’re fishing water with no or little drift the water is “dead”. Look for moving water. Slower moving water can be ideal for red drum and flounder but stealth is critical. Fishing should good for the coming week. Target red and black, seatrout and flounder. When live bait fish and you don’t detect a strike and you reel in just a head of shrimp you’ve likely been picked clean by a black drum. Try changing the way you hook shrimp. Hook it through the body instead of its head. Black drum have biting well up and down the coast as well as flounder. One fishermen has said the flounder bite has saved his inshore fishing there biting so well. Plastic such as terminators with spinner blades have doing great. Chuck Smith (of Cransman’s) and I caught several nice flounder a new Bass Assassin called the electric buzzer (crazy name). Should be another hot plastic particularly in dirty water.

Good Fishing! Capt. Jack McGowan