The weekend is upon us again and with it, some rather nice weather. Scattered thunderstorms for Friday and Saturday, but 1 to 2 foot seas is something none of us is going to turn down.

The pier is still on fire with bonita, Spanish, king mackerel, ladyfish, bluefish, hardtails, redfish, black drum, and tarpon. Shark have also been very active alongside the dolphin so if you get anything on your line, get ready to reel it in fast. Almost everything is biting on gotchas, jigfish, casting spoons, or zman pearl flukes. Use some sabikis to get you some live bait to throw out for the kings that are running through. There is plenty of bait out there, but frozen cigar minnows will also do the trick. Tarpon are out there but seem to be finicky on the bite. Try throwing some large hogy swimbaits or even go smaller in the zman range to see if you can get them to load up.

The beach is still filled with grass out here in Navarre/Pensacola Beach. Try to find patches where you can throw your line out. Pompano, whiting, jacks, hardtails, bluefish, ladyfish, redfish, and black drum are running and are definitely hungry. All the little bait fish in the grass are helping to drive them in. If there is too much grass for you, put away your pompano rig and throw out some small topwater plugs to get over the grass. It will help attract them to you with the popping sounds and keep the grass off your rig as much as possible. Salty pompano rigs are still the go to for the patches with no grass tipped with some shrimp, sand fleas, fish bites or fish gum.

The sound is also getting some awesome reports of slot reds and gator trout. Fishing first thing in the morning or around sunset with some popping corks and gulp bait will get them going. Grass flats or deeper docks are the areas producing the most results, in the heat of the day it’s too hot in the shallows and you will need to try to troll or drop lines in the deeper waters. We have some swimming minnow baits with neon tail colors that are catching their eye.

It’s the last weekend we get of snapper season so get out there and get them while you can. If you want to go the artificial route, try to drop some large bucktail jigs or vertical jigs in chartreuse or pink. Make sure to have a decent sized leader and get ready to pull them up out of the wrecks and get them up into your vessel. A 2 hook snapper rig or large grouper rig with some cigar minnows or squid chunks will also get the bite fired up. Use large weights to drop it fast to get past all those bait stealing triggerfish out there.

The rivers are swollen up with all the rain we have been having and it’s making you able to get into fishing spots you normally wouldn’t be able to. With that said, be careful of new logs and branches being dropped into the water that you aren’t used to being there. Fish with live minnows, some darker soft plastics, or spinner baits under some of the brush to get you in on some bass, bream, and cats. Word of advice though, bring you plenty of bug spray as the yellow flies are still around and the mosquitos are everywhere.

Do you have a report for us or pics of your recent catches you would like to show off? Send them our way at [email protected] or stop in the store to tell us all about your fish story.