What a week of fishing! I was able to dodge the red snapper zoo and I couldn’t have been happier! July in general has been a pretty great month but the last few weeks I have been seeing a lot more bull redfish than expected for this time of the year which is a great sign for the months to come!

This week is all about the “endangered” red snapper! So far this has been the easiest season that we have had. They have been on almost every piece of ledge from the 90 out to the 240 stuff. Not only have the reds been abundant they’ve been hungry! Live bait or dead bait hasn’t mattered, but generally the bigger the bait the bigger the fish. Live pinfish and pilchards have been the bait of choice for us this week with frozen sardines catching their fair share as well. An 8 foot 60-80 leader on a sliding sinker rig has been doing the trick.

Catching our red snapper was not a problem and we got some big mangrove snapper in the mix. We struck out on tarpon off the beach Wednesday but that was a good thing because we changed our tactic for red snapper completely. Nearshore tarpon fishing still will be good anytime the water is above 76 or so. Nothing major is happening with cobia, but be ready while snapper fishing.

Caught two of these last night at Melbourne Beach. There full of teeth 😬 I thought maybe a Barracuda or Mackerel?

On Monday (yesterday), I was fishing with live pin fish off the Melbourne Beach Pier and I hooked a red that was about 20-25 pounds. After a great fight the line broke trying to pull him up to the pier. Best fish ever. Lol

This week was terrible, hardly any snapper anywhere. All we could catch was grouper. Could this season get any worse? lol. Really, though, it’s been great fishing. The boats left at 7am and were limited out by 9am, which included the hour-long ride out there. Plus, all the fish were slobs. It’s an absolute joke, but hey, it’s hard to complain; the fishing was great, as was the weather. After our snapper we tried for the grouper but not a ton of luck in that department. We did manage a few, but nothing crazy. The bottom is pretty cold.

Another hot week of humidity and sweat as we try our best to find some shady spot where the fish are hanging out! Lagoon fishing has been producing with an above average bite, surprisingly. Although, lots of the activity is coming from undersized fish, particularly the trout out there. You can catch all you want of them, but you can’t take them with you!

This past week has been a hectic one for us here at Fineline Fishing Charters. Between getting anglers out for fishing charters and running back and forth between the coast and Orlando three days to attend ICAST, captain Justin and I have been busy.

DAY 1 (7-12-2019): Generally, the bites were more frequent earlier in the morning & really slowed down by 11:30. Also, the livebait kept the smaller ones off the hook.

DAY 2 (7-13-2019): Out of Port Canaveral; again, the morning bite with livebait was the winning combination.