Hot Fishing with Florida Fishing Guide John Tarr

Captain John Tarr
Jul 20
4 min read

I'm changing things up a little bit on the website, the blog, and in business, to remain one of permier Florida Fishing Guides. These changes are going to enhance my ability to give my customers the best experience possible, while protecting the fishery and fish in the area. One of the problems we have with a smaller fishing environment, like Mosquito Lagoon, is many places are readily identifiable from their background and in today's world, that means more people checking out your photos/videos and locating those areas. Once the area is located, it becomes the hot spot and the fish are over-pressured, moving to a new location. For my blog, this means fewer photos and videos, unless I can obtain them without any identifiable background information. This almost completely eliminates posting of video, although my customers still get private videos of their trips.

We are in full summer mode here in Florida, like much of the southeast. Hot temperatures, high humidity, blazing sun and lower wind speeds will be prevalent for the next few months. While the weather is definitely hot, so is the fishing. We've had a good time on recent trips getting to target all of our top species: redfish, seatrout, snook, black drum and tarpon. As a client, all you need to decide is which fish you want to target the most and that is where we will start. This is a personal decision for every angler and one that I take very serious when making our game plan for the day. Some anglers love chasing tarpon, others want nothing to do with them. As I have always stated, my job, as your guide, is to provide you with the opportunity to catch your dream fish, not mine.

Summer fishing trips typically require early starts, so anglers need to be ready for launch times around 5am. Early launch times allow us the most time to enjoy the day, before the afternoon thunderstorms start to roll in or the heat becomes too oppressive to enjoy the day. While I know many of you want to enjoy the Florida sun, wearing shots and short-sleeved shirts, I highly recommend wearing lightweight, long pants and long-sleeved pants, with a pair of socks. The early morning starts can be brutal with no-see-ums, which can make the start to the day miserable. There is nothing worse than trying to target fish and being attacked by those nasty little buggers. Once the sun comes up, you can feel free to roll those sleeves up and change to shorts, if you so wish. Yes, I have bug spray, but is really only stops about half of the no-see-ums, so they're still a pain.

So let's discuss our targets, species-by-species, for a moment:

Redfish: There have been plenty of redfish located in the shallow flats. These fish have usually been cooperative, but every once in a while they have proven to be finicky. Tailing, backing and cruising fish have been the norm, with fly fishing being one of the best ways to target them.

Seatrout: Seatrout have been plentiful, if you want slot-sized fish or just some early morning activity to get the rod bent. Topwater plugs and flies have been my go to for these fish. Now, if you want a real challenge, locating and catching Gator Seatrout is about to hit prime time. These fish are wary and require the ultimate in stealthy approach and accurate casting. The biggest we have taken in the last month was 8 pounds, but we've seen much larger fish.

Black Drum: Black Drum are one of those fish that I usually don't target, but just kind of come upon. Yes, there are plenty of them out there and there are some massive schools of them. I just don't get a lot of clients that want to target them. I'm not sure why they don't get the same respect as Redfish, because they should. They are strong, powerful fighters and they require some of the most precise casting you can do.

Snook: Snook, still my favorite fish, are in the height of spawning season right now, so a lot of the big fish have left the area. There are still tons of small to medium fish around, and occasionally we find a big girl done with spawning and ready to resume feeding. Small to medium sized snook are the prefect target for new fly anglers or those that want to see some topwater explosions that are second to none. As summer progresses, their numbers will increase and the big ones will return to the flats.

Tarpon: This summer has been one of the best tarpon years we've had in a long time. I have fish ranging from 5 pounds to 100 pounds on a regular basis. We've had a few even larger, but they have been a little more rare than the others. Tarpon typically stay with fish of similar size, so I just need to know what size you would like to target. Chasing tarpon is all about being in the right location and getting into the right position. it isn't a game for anglers that want a strike every cast, as tarpon can be as snooty of a fish as you will ever find. There is a reason we count follows, sniffs, flashes, strikes and jumps. Still, with some effort and planning, we've had a good start to the season; our best day was 9 eats, 6 jumps and 4 landed.

When planning you summer fishing trip, I do urge you to look at the lunar tables. If you can avoid the full moon, I strongly suggest it. The full moon can make it a lot more difficult to predict the fish movement and bites, especially during the summer. However, if your vacation is already planned and it happens to be during that time, then I would strongly encourage you to think about a night time trip. Summer night time fishing is a way to avoid the hottest part of the day and can produce some of the best fishing. Night time fishing is just a different form of sight fishing, as we target lighted areas and the shadows of those lights. Snook, seatrout, redfish and tarpon are all readily available at night time.