Fishing Forecast with Freshwater

Summer is on the horizon, and fishing couldn’t get better! It was a more challenging than usual spring season, and the lack of consistent weather made fishing more difficult. Summer weather can be brutal to fish in due to the very warm temperatures and afternoon thunderstorms, but the fish don’t mind it. I tend to start my days much earlier in the summer and be off the water before it gets too hot to bear.

Fishing morning conditions, you’ll want to throw topwater spooks and plugs, as most fish will be aggressive and ready to eat as the sun rises. Not a morning person? Fish the afternoon rain with topwater frogs for big bullseye snakeheads. When it’s raining, frogs, earthworms, and even lizards are on the move trying to find cover, which often ends them up in the water and a prime target for a snakehead or even largemouth bass.

I have been trying new things for slower fishing this past spring.

1. Finesse fishing: sizing down your lure profiles will increase bites on off days and high-pressured areas.

2. Wacky rigged worms have been a recent favorite of mine, and moving into summer, it will be an early morning favorite to many anglers who have the patience to fish one.

3. Live bait: whether it’s for peacocks, largies, or a subtropical cichlid, a live bait such as a shiner or a red wiggler worm may make all the difference from having a good day to having a great day on the water.

The Lake Ida Chain is getting better slowly by the day. It’s hard to believe it took over a month to recover from all the heavy rainstorms we had in April. Speaking of those heavy rains, The Everglades water level is now considered “high,” and fishing for exotics has slowed down, but don’t let that from stopping you from going out there and finding big largemouth bass out on the flats. I like using a swim jig with a Gambler EZ or a Texas-Rigged big EZ for more shallow areas.

The last subject I want to cover this month is clown knifefish. When the water temps get up in the summer, the water oxygen level is lower, and this will cause clown knifefish to come up and take a gulp of air more frequently than the rest of the year. You can target these clowns with live bait or artificial, and once you see them rolling on the surface, it gives their location away. Try to present a bait right around the area they came up and wait it out for 10 minutes or so for the fish to find it.

You can’t catch them sitting on the couch! Go out there and try new things!!

Pompano Beach (Hillsboro Inlet), FL - Jun 2023

Traveling to South Florida to fish is one of the top choices and the fishing is red hot. So, this month we’re talking tarpon and peacock bass.

The Everglades offers lots of areas to find what was nonexistent years ago…peacock bass. Peacock bass have become the top choice of freshwater targeted species because of their bright beautiful colors and the fight they can give an angler.

Peacock bass were purposely stocked in South Florida waters in the 80’s to control the invasive species that people were dumping in these waters. Between the peacocks and the 17 other invasive species, the black bass have definitely declined in numbers. Black bass can still be caught daily and with almost every guide throwing back their catches this trend may continue, but this is another story that needs to be addressed. Peacock bass can be addicting to catch and will excite every angler, so come to South Florida; one of the only areas in the United States to find this species.

Tarpon season will have arrived, and tarpon fill areas in Flamingo ENP. Roaming from the Keys to Shark River and Whitewater Bay, these fish usually range from 10-200 lbs. and are usually targeted by the traveling fly angler coming to Florida for the big catch of a lifetime. If you’re not a fly angler, live bait and lures also are used to target the fish.

Catch and release is always the best option with big tarpon; 40 inches and above must not be lifted into the boat but released boat side for best results in the health/safety of the tarpon.

Come book a trip and experience some of the best fishing Florida has to offer with Captain Steve Purser @ FloridaFlatsFishingAdventures.

Iwait the entire year for the June fishing bite offshore. Every June, the schoolie sized mahi-mahi form up into large schools and migrate past our coastline, feeding voraciously on everything they come into contact with. It can be really exciting to go offshore in search of these schools of fish. One school can have 50+ mahimahi within it. Mahi have a very useful character trait in that they don’t leave each other behind. In other words, if you find a school of mahi-mahi and have one hooked up, just leave him swimming out there still hooked up to the line and the entire school will stay right with the boat. It can take some serious time trolling offshore to find a school like this, but what a pot of gold it is to find. Once you find them, just set the boat up on a drift and bail them on a 20-pound spinning rod. I usually use dead squid for bait until the fish start getting hook shy, and then I switch over to casting out live pilchards and ballyhoo if I have them available.

Inshore, on the edge of the Gulfstream, we’re still in the season where some big monsters can be caught. Large amberjacks are still biting around the shipwrecks, as are some nice grouper and cobias. Wrecks over 200’ deep work the best this time of year and live bait always gets the best bite. Big game sharks are still migrating along our coast in June too. Hammerheads and dusky sharks are out there in 300-400’ of water and can be caught with big bloody baits (a bonito or kingfish works best) drifted along the bottom. Trolling the reef in June is a lot of fun on the reef fish. We can catch lots of action trolling for kingfish, bonitos, barracuda, blackfin tuna, and wahoo. As the surface water temperature heats up, fish tend to go deeper, so you will get your best bites on deep planer baits if you are trolling. June action, both inshore and offshore. Get

Let’s grow with Florida together.

Confessions of a Fishaholic, by Thatch Maguire, is a hilarious and irreverent look at one man’s quest to catch fish in spite of life’s annoying interferences. You’ll travel with this awkward adventurer as he risks home and health to pursue his passion for fishing...regardless of the consequences. Anglers of all expertise levels will immediately identify with why his addiction is incurable. This book defines the blurred line between passion and obsession.

20 Sacks Weighed Heavier than 30 Pounds at One Tourney

Catch a 30-pound ve- sh sack of bass, and you’re pretty much a lock to win whatever tournament you’re shing, right?

Imagine that glorious moment when you’ve been culling 5-pounders and pull into the docks to unload your livewell. With a grin on your face, you haul that huge bag of sh up to the scales…only to nd out your 30-pound sack barely put you in the top 20! at was the reality at a May 6 Roland Martin Marine Center Bass Series event on Lake Okeechobee. e shing was so good that anglers weighed 20 ve-bass limits that were heavier than 30 pounds. It took 36.82 pounds to win. We’re not sure who keeps track of such things, but that’s more 30-pound sacks in one tournament than we’ve ever heard of.

A father-son team of Preston and 11-year-old Tavyn Heisler won the 177-team tournament and a $6,500 big check.

“It was an amazing day,” Preston told a RMMCBS reporter a er the tournament. “I’m still shaking and I couldn’t ask for anything better.”

Tavyn said he was the net man early in the tournament, but he caught his own 8-pounder late in the day. His favorite lure was a black and blue charterbait.

To read a full report on the event, visit: rolandmartinmarinecenterseries.com.