Snook Prime Time at Boca Grande as Jack Crevalle Light Up Sarasota Bay

What's Biting

What's Next

With water temperatures holding at 77–79°F and the waning crescent moon trimming surface light into the early part of the week, conditions are stacking up for productive sessions across multiple patterns.

Snook at the passes remain the top priority. Per CB's Saltwater Outfitters (Sarasota), Boca Grande and the surrounding passes are in full pre-spawn mode — fish actively staging after migrating from back bays to beaches. This movement typically intensifies through mid-to-late May as spawn timing tightens. Target pass edges and deeper channel mouths on outgoing tides, when snook stack to ambush baitfish swept through the current. Live threadfin herring, pilchards, and mullet are the preferred presentations; soft plastics on jig heads are a productive switch when live bait runs short. Check current state regulations before harvesting — snook seasons and slot limits are subject to change.

Jack crevalle are schooling near the surface in Sarasota Bay and responding hard to topwater, per CB's Outfitters. Early-morning sessions with fast-retrieved poppers or surface jigs are the call, especially where birds are diving over bait. CB's also notes fly fishing is starting to produce well for jacks this time of year — schooling fish near oyster bars and seawalls are highly accessible targets on the fly. With the waning crescent providing low-light mornings, the topwater window should stretch a bit longer than it would under a brighter moon.

Redfish and trout round out the weekend gameplan. Capt. Chuck Cress (CB's Outfitters) is putting clients on upper-slot reds in the back bays, and Captain Rick Murphy's Florida Insider confirms the statewide trout bite is on. Grass flats with adjacent deeper channels are the prime holding areas — work outgoing tides when bait funnels off flat edges.

Offshore, wave heights of 2.6 feet and winds near 15 mph at buoy 42036 are manageable for most bay and nearshore boats, making runs to natural bottom structure viable. Buoy 42013 showed just 3 m/s of wind, suggesting calm inshore bay surfaces through the weekend. Saltwater Sportsman has highlighted the Tampa Bay hogfish fishery over natural bottom as an emerging nearshore option worth exploring on calmer days.

Context

May is one of the most consistently productive months for inshore angling in the Tampa Bay and Sarasota corridor, and the current conditions are tracking right on schedule. The snook pre-spawn migration through Boca Grande Pass is one of the Gulf Coast's signature seasonal events — large fish historically show up in the passes from late April through June as water temperatures climb through the mid-to-upper 70s and photoperiod triggers spawn staging. The 34-pound boat record reported by Capt. Brandon Naeve at CB's Saltwater Outfitters on May 9th fits squarely within this window and signals that quality fish have arrived in meaningful numbers.

Jack crevalle schooling in Sarasota Bay during April and May is equally on-pattern. CB's Outfitters identifies this as a reliable spring fixture, with fish feeding aggressively on baitfish near structure and fly fishing beginning to produce well — both consistent with typical seasonal behavior for this stretch of bay.

The Snook Nook's May 2026 report also confirms that snook fishing is heating up statewide, with more slot and over-slot fish making consistent appearances. That corroborates what CB's is seeing at Boca Grande and suggests the pre-spawn push is a broader Gulf coastal trend, not an isolated local fluke.

Water temperatures of 77–79°F per NOAA buoys are consistent with typical mid-May readings in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and represent the warm-water threshold that pushes redfish and spotted seatrout into higher activity levels as well. No anomalous cold-front disruptions are apparent in the buoy data, suggesting a clean seasonal progression — a contrast to the cooler, slower-to-warm conditions that can stall the bite in March and early April.

Overall, the Tampa Bay and Sarasota inshore bite appears to be neither early nor late — it is right on time, and the target species are behaving as expected for the second week of May.