Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2025 i Florida Sportsman

Walking on the riverfront boardwalk the other day, I chanced to observe something I felt worth relating. I was watching for snook among a series of oyster reefs planted by county officials for estuarine habitat enhancement. It was mid-April and there was a pogy “hatch” going on—glittering swarms of inch-long baitfish could be seen here and there. There were also scattered pods of 7- to 8-inch mullet. The tide was nearing the top of incoming, the water clear to about 4 feet. I’d noted several snook—one of them likely in the 40-inch range--and a few magnum jack crevalle surely pushing 30 pounds. It’s funny the things you see when you carry a coffee cup instead of a fishing rod. One little detail catches your eye and you see things differently.…

As the spring fishing continues, other species are up to bat. The large tarpon biomasses that gathered in the channels are still being found throughout the day and there still are many around. However, you can tell that the tarpon are on the move heading north. Meanwhile, the permit biomasses are breaking up and have started heading back to the flats, but you can still find them in the wrecks around the Marquesas. June is the month for the snappers, mainly yellowtails and muttons. You will notice the bite increasing with some of the largest yellowtails probably caught all year. The bite will continue to strengthen as the full moon gets closer. The bite is usually the best at the outside edge of the reef in about 80 feet of…

June seems to be the month where we really see “Lake Atlantic” opening the door of opportunity for everyone to enjoy a piece of the pie. A great tool I find myself obsessing over this time of year are the beach cameras we have throughout our region. Yes, sea condition charts are available, but it never hurts to look at a real time view of the swell. There are multiple cameras from Boca Raton to Sebastian Inlet that can found at www.video-monitoring.com. These cameras also make it easy to check water clarity for those looking to sightfish along the beach. A popular fishery all summer, snook and tarpon from the sand are on the hitlist of fly and light tackle anglers. Pilchards and threadfin herring are the most common bait…

Tripletail arrive in the Big Bend region this month, drifting in with each incoming tide. These pelagic fish from way offshore actually spend the summer in tepid, murky waters only 5 to 6 feet deep, and what they do to amuse themselves during that time is a mystery. We do know they eat a variety of small fish, shrimp and crabs, and hang around scant shade (when they need a break from the cruel sun) provided by crab buoys and PVC pipes marking the clam farms. When they’re on the bottom, perhaps spooked by passing boats, they don’t seem to bite much; at least I’ve never caught one while blind casting. Boat captains with towers can spot these fish when they’re floating flat on the surface. For remaining boaters, these…

Sometimes in fishing circles you might not know what you caught until it’s too late. Recently, I learned that fact the hard way. For the past 15 years, our large family from northern Virginia always looked forward to occasional vacations and fishing trips to the Florida Keys. My father fished the Keys a lot, mostly around Marathon. One day during Christmas break, we took out our family boat, Las Sirenas, a 33-foot Boston Whaler Outrage, to try to do a little trolling with Capt. Chris Albronda, an out-of-town guide we had met at the tackle shop the day before. Since I didn’t know much about trolling for sailfish and wahoo, Chris agreed to come along and show us the ropes. The day didn’t exactly go as planned. Eventually, we decided…

In a decades long effort by NOAA Fisheries to close huge swaths of our oceans to recreational fishing under the premise of fishery management, rather than using accepted measures such as bag limits, gear or season modifications, the Feds are on the doorstep of a significant closure. NOAA Fisheries is all but ignoring Congress, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC) and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) as they move forward with Secretarial Amendment 59, a misguided effort NOAA claims is needed to rebuild Atlantic red snapper stocks. Amendment 59 proposes to close all recreational angling from the Florida-Georgia border south to Cape Canaveral, over 180 miles of coastline, for 55 snapper and grouper species, from December 1 through the end of February, in order to prevent…

I DON’T USE much spray paint these days, but when I do, it’s for fishing—as a way to seriously mark key items on the boat or trailer. For example: • EVER TRAILERED the boat down the street and left your trailer padlock on the trailer tongue? Lock and trailer are the same gray color, and that lock will likely end up a block down the street before falling off (been there, done that). Paint it fluorescent orange and that lock will last for years. Mine certainly has. • PAINT THE KEY to the trailer lock that same fluorescent orange and there will be no fumbling with different keys when the coast is calling. It will show up in your hand in poor lighting, even pre-sunrise before leaving the house. At…

Pre-dawn in January, and it’s cold and dark. I’m standing waist-deep in shorts in 53-degree lake water, uncontrollably shivering like an electrified tuning fork, as about 3,500 pounds of live rainbow trout are being dumped into the water around me. This is Florida? Sure is! The rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus my-kiss) have been hauled to Kingsley Lake in north central Florida from a hatchery in Missouri. The trout are part of an ongoing experiment by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) to increase trophy-size bass in Florida lakes. Researchers are studying the impact of providing bass with highly nutritious rainbow trout as supplemental forage. Of course, stocking the lake has the added benefit of furnishing Kingsley anglers the rare opportunity to catch a few rainbow trout—which are native to…

As we move into June, fishing in South Florida is in a transition period. Moving out of spring and into summer, most of our wintertime migratory fish have moved out of the area and won’t return until late September. So, you may wonder, is there anything left to target in South Florida? Yes, plenty! You just need to know what, where, and when to target. Offshore anglers will be greeted with calm seas for the most part. Warmer days can mean getting out early before the sun is high, which sends many of the surface and subsurface feeders deeper in the water column. Once you’ve reached the outside of the outer reef, 80 to 200 feet of water, expect bonitos in the eight- to 15-pound range, kingfish up to 20…

And just like that, the heat is on! We now enter our dog days of summer. Temperatures can be expected to be in the 90s with plenty of humidity. The air is not the only thing to warm up, as our water temperatures now creep toward the high 80s. As it gets hot, we also begin a weather pattern we can rely on. Rain becomes one of those triggers our fish like. Often fishing after storms is a great time to get tight. The rain although often brief in areas, can be fierce. Most storms contain lightning, and anglers should have some concerns about that. We can expect two types of weather patterns to fish around, and they are as follows. First, and practically daily, will be our standard afternoon…

There’s something special about catching open ocean fish within sight of land. June is a great month to target big kingfish close to shore, sometimes just past the Space Coast’s breaking surf. It’s a chance for small boaters—even kayakers—to get a crack at these big mackerel. The most popular area by far is the stretch of hard bottom area from Sebastian Inlet south to Fort Pierce Inlet. With reefs extending from the shoreline to about half a mile out, this area holds all kinds of bait and fish all summer. When schools of threadfin herring and hornbellies show up to filter feed in the green water outside the reefs, it’s game on. Kings, tarpon, jacks, blacktips and giant Spanish mackerel will hover around these schools. If there’s bait, there’s fish.…

June fishing is about as good as it gets. Other months may have more comfortable temperatures, or a specific fish may bite better but overall, June has it all. Although there is no doubt that it is summertime, fishing during the early and late hours can be pleasant and most of the fish species are active in Northwest Florida. It is hard to beat the sight of a speckled trout or redfish smashing a topwater plug. This is the time of year to break out the surface lures and explore the vast network of inshore grass flats and tidal creeks that span Northwest Florida’s coastline. Early and late before the shallows heat up is when topwater plugs, plastic jerk baits and flyrod poppers work best on the grass flats. Later…

“I saw a fish staring at the bank, which they do while they wait to ambush,” Smith said. “I threw the frog over its head, and he inhaled it.” Snakeheads. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’ve amassed a hardcore following among South Florida anglers. Hunting these prehistoric fish with the relentless energy and primal curiosity of a young boy, Jaxon Smith, 10, of Loxahatchee took second place in the 2025 Snakehead Smackdown hosted by RB Tackle in Margate. “The day started out tough, but we kept moving,” said Smith, whose dream is to become a sponsored angler and travel to fish. “When the sun came up, we could see them bedding in the sun. It turned into the best day of snakehead fishing ever.” Smith fished with a Drave U.S.A.…

Seahorse Key, a 165-acre island three miles south of Cedar Key, is home to an important marine research lab for the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Since the 1950s, the Nature Coast Biological Station Seahorse Key Marine Lab has been critical to research and educational programs, partnering with universities like Purdue, Tennessee and Santa Fe college. This unique facility was severely damaged by Hurricane Helene last September. As the eye of the storm passed just offshore, Seahorse Key and Cedar Key were swamped with 12 feet of storm surge. At Cedar Key, rapidly rising water wiped century-old buildings off foundations, washed out bridges and roads, mowed down piers and docks and flooded businesses and homes. UF/IFAS plans to replace the storm-torn Seahorse Key field lab with…

IT WAS ABOUT 7 P.M. on an August Saturday night when I heard, “Hey Dad, check out this mang.” I turned and saw my oldest son Zach walking towards me with a monster mangrove snapper. He had just returned from a trip on a buddy’s boat to the Florida Middle Grounds. As we filleted fish on the dock, he just couldn’t stop talking about the Grounds and insisting that we need to go back. On my boat, a Sea Hunt Gamefish 27 with twin Yamaha 250s, the Middle Grounds had always seemed like a long way for a day trip, usually taking us three hours from “dock to spot.” My lower back certainly remembered how much longer that ride can be when the forecast doesn’t cooperate. But I also had…

A big full moon hung in the western sky over my friend’s kayak. Soundlessly, as if conjured out of some artist’s imagination, a single pelican started across the lagoon. From my perspective, the bird passed directly in front of the moon, casting it for a nanosecond into partial eclipse. It was a scene of ethereal beauty and uncommonly good timing. I stood by my own kayak, feeling the cool slush of wavelets against my ankles. My mind’s eye turned to this little patch of sand rotating through fields of celestial gravity. The moon was checking out, the sun checking in. The compounding influence of this synchronized shift was causing the Atlantic to rise higher than normal. A spring tide, it’s called, from “springing up,” not the season. Through a nearby…

It’s time to go long and go deep for the big game score in the 10,000 Islands. Being born and raised in South Florida and fishing in some capacity for most of my life, I have nothing against trolling, fly fishing, kite fishing or pitching the bushes for snook. I truly enjoy all of it. However, I always find myself being drawn back to the good old hard nose, down and dirty techniques of bottom fishing for groupers and snappers. Bottom fishing has long been my passion, and given the option, one of my preferred types of fishing. Having had the opportunity to fish throughout the world, and battle with a wide variety of species, what continually keeps me up at night dreaming about the next big fish, is that…

If you’re looking for a wide variety of available species to fish for, this month, the West Central Region has you covered. From skinny waters to the bluewater arena, the action is heating up along with the temperatures. The first day of summer is June 20, but I’ll bet we see some days with air temperatures topping the 90-degree mark before then. With that in mind, think about fishing during the times of the day when both air and water temperatures are cooler, giving you the best shot at the widest variety of fish. There are three targeted species this month available to nearshore and offshore anglers. Tarpon have a huge following by anglers looking for big game action. Permit, another warmwater fish, can be found around the mouths of…

If you can sleep in during June, you’re a much stronger man than I am. The calm water starts calling my name every morning once the sky starts to lighten. The winter of 2024 is finally a distant frozen memory. Only the surf fishermen are sad to see the water temp pass the 70-degree mark on the way up. For the rest of us just about anything we want to fish for is feeding at least sometimes during the day. I believe there will be more boats trolling the bluewater rips this June than there’s ever been. The last few years have seen an explosion in the bluewater capable boats hitting the water heading to deep water. Not only are there more boats, but the technology aboard those boats is…

With Memorial Day behind us, summer is in full swing, bringing packed boat ramps and a hot bite across the panhandle. Whether you’re chasing redfish in the bay, tarpon along the beaches, or red snapper offshore, June offers plenty of opportunities. But with rising water temperatures and increased fishing pressure, adapting to conditions is key. Having the right bait, timing your trips, and making small adjustments can mean the difference between a slow day and a full cooler. Inshore fishing is driven by bait movement this time of year. As schools of pilchards and menhaden push into the bays, predator species follow. Bull redfish will be holding around bridges, jetties, and along the surf. These redfish want live bait this time of year, a fresh cigar minnow, croaker, or Spanish…

JUNE JUNE 6-8: Lower Keys Chamber of Commerce Dolphin Tournament, Big Pine Key. www.lowerkeyschamber.com JUNE 6-8: Flora-Bama Fishing Rodeo, Perdido Key. www.florabama.com JUNE 10-12: Ladies Tarpon Fly Tournament, Islamorada. www.ladiestarponfly.org JUNE 11-15: Pensacola International Billfish Tournament, Pensacola. www.pbgfc.com JUNE 12-15: Saltwater Slam, Pompano Beach. www.bluewatermovements.com JUNE 13-14: Old School Kingfish Shootout, St. Augustine. www.oldschoolkingfish.com JUNE 16-20: Gold Cup Tarpon Tournament, Islamorada. www.goldcuptt.com JUNE 18-22: Emerald Coast Blue Marlin Classic, Miramar Beach. www.fishecbc.com JUNE 19-21: UM Hall of Fame & Museum Celebrity Fishing Tournament, Islamorada. www.canesfish.com JUNE 20-23: Pensacola Fishing Rodeo, Pensacola. www.pensacolasports.org JUNE 21: Old Salt Ladies Tournament, Madeira Beach. www.oldsaltfishing.org JUNE 25-26: IFC Captain’s Cup Dolphin Tournament, Islamorada. www.theislamoradafishingclub.com JUNE 26-28: Ancient City Game Fish Association Kingfish Challenge, St. Augustine. www.acgfa.com JUNE 28-29: Bass Busters Tournament Trail, Clewiston. www.bassbustersflorida.com…