It’s summertime and you know what that means for us here at Fineline Fishing Charters? That’s right, the snook fishing is just about as hot as the heat index on most days.

The weather has been cooperating, but it has been hit or miss for baitfish along the beaches over the last week. The reefs and wrecks in 60 to 90-feet of water are holding king mackerel, barracuda, red snapper, and shark when we’ve been able to find baitfish to slow troll over these structures.

It’s that time of year again when anything can happen on a fishing charter along the Space Coast. We’ve been catching big redfish, snook, tarpon and black drum over this past week with our clients.

It’s been a few weeks since my last Spacefish Report. I’ve been guiding down in Islamorada for most of the month of May.

Bait, bait, and more bait. There are excellent numbers of small pilchard’s, pogies and glass minnows in our local waters right now, and these baitfish are the preferred dinner choice for just about every predatory fish that swims in our lagoons.

It’s looking a lot like dinner time around here!! Man, we’ve had some great grocery shopping fishing lately. You anglers out there that like to eat good tasting fish need to give us a call and let’s go.

It’s snook season! The big ones are becoming more user friendly now that the water temps have risen into the mid 70-degree range.

The weather was downright horrible for much of the first portion of the week with strong north winds and even some rain passing through on Thursday. The bite however was really good which was a complete opposite from the not so good weather conditions.

Canaveral has been the place to go if you’re looking to tussle with a big snook lately. The bite has been best fairly early in the day. Live baitfish or jumbo shrimp seem to be working best. Along the near coastal waters, cobia and tripletail are possible.

Prior to the frontal passage on Monday afternoon the fish were firing off hard! We hope this will continue for the rest of the week, but it remains to be seen at this point

“If you want to!”

A big daddy black drum caught with Capt. Jim Ross!

Red Snapper soon is just around the corner with dates soon to be announced…

Capt. Jim Ross says he catches mangrove snapper like this one with light leaders and small hooks, which will get you more bites on the mangroves than standard bottom tackle.

Beating the storm, hitting that black drum bite!

The black drum bite is still booming in the Lagoon!

Big barracuda caught with Capt. Jim Ross