By: Capt. Bart Marx
The waters have warmed up nicely and the bait has moved into the local waters and is easy to find. Look around the channel markers and near the edges of the bars that have grass on them. This time of year, most of the guys that throw a cast net throw a ten foot with three eights mesh. This type of net is good to use in waters up to fifteen feet deep. You may have to use some chum to get the baits to ball up so you can throw the net over them. After you have succeeded in this process it is very important to have a good live well. A good live well shape is an oval or round, if it is a rectangle the corners need to have rounded corners so the baits don’t run into the walls with their noses this will kill your baits. A forty to fifty-gallon oval live well will hold enough live bait to fish and chum all day. There is another factor the live well needs a good water pump to suck in fresh sea water to keep them alive. There are several different sizes and they are rated by GPH gallons per hour. Most pumps have a five eights discharge to put the water into the well and have an adjustment to push the water around so the baits can swim around in the tank. Once your boat is in position, start chumming. When things get active, cast a bait into the strike zone and find out who is hungry. During this month, there is a great possibility to catch an inshore slam; snook, red, and a trout. If you happen to catch a tarpon this is an inshore grand slam! Snook are in the pre-spawn mode moving from their regular habitat out to a little saltier place to spawn and they will be moving around and hungry. Offshore, there should be plenty of snapper to harvest around fifty feet, also look for lane and mangrove snapper. Yellow tails eighty to one hundred feet. Yellow tails can be chummed up around a wreck or an artificial reef that has good structure to hold them. The lane and mangroves like to hang around natural bottom with a good ledge. Keep your eyes out as the man in the grey suit, nicknamed the tax collector better known as shark, will be in the area all summer!