July 18, 2021:
Which fish are biting?
Red Drum, Black Drum, Flounder, Spotted Sea Trout, Whiting, Croaker, Blacktip Shark, Atlantic Sharnose Shark, Stingray, Barracuda, Spanish Mackerel, King Mackerel
Best times to fish?
Early mornings and 2 hours before or after low tide.
Best places to fish?
If surf fishing, find cuts and holes. Cast in the first cut in front of the 1st break if the tide is high enough or just past the sand bar and last break in high or low tide.
If fishing inshore, find structure. Predator gamefish will stack up behind structure facing into the current and attack their prey as it swims and floats by. Use a popping cork and cast up currents your bait floats with the current into the strike zone or use a carolina rig, clacker rig, or fish finder rig on the bottom and allow your bait to run with the current into the strike zone.
You can also drift fish or cast fish along the shore. Try to work your bait horizontally down the shore.
If pier fishing, we are using a fish finder rig or a popping cork and seeing great results using cut mullet as well as cut whiting and croaker.
Notes and observations for this week:
In the Litchfield beach area we are seeing many gamefish such as red drum and black drum work up into the small creeks and waterways due to high rainfall and recent king tides. During high tide, redfish are working the grass areas eating bait they can’t usually access. If you are using a weedless rig, you may have success there, but we are seeing our best results timing a lower tide with the early morning bite when possible, preferably an incoming low tide because the fish will be hungrier.
The black drum bite is strong. Red drum early morning bite is strong. Spec bite is weak and flounder bite is slow. Tarpon bite hasn’t started yet, but should soon. Tons and tons of smaller active fish such as whiting, croaker, pinfish.
We’ve observed more and more larger mullet running in the surf. This is going to bring in the tarpon as well as larger bluefish and other gamefish in the surf. We’ve caught several medium sized Blacktip sharks in the surf the were chasing bait balls.
Try to match the bait. During these summer months, finger mullet grow to become larger mullet. While both finger mullet and medium/full-sized sea mullet (horse mullet) are all present, we tend to see best results using larger mullet or mullet chunks around this time or year as well as larger artificial lures and large swim baits.
Cut or live shrimp are working and always work as well as artificial shrimp, but we try to use mullet first in this mid to late-summer season.
Tight lines!
-Mack
PS: Feel free to ask questions in the comments below and share your catches as well!
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