Chris with Skinny Water Lures brings you this month’s
fishing report!!
July rolled into Palm Coast with blazing sunrises, glassy
morning waters, and the kind of heat that’ll melt your
flip-flops if you’re not careful. But that heat? It also lit a
fire under the inshore bite, and Skinny Water Lures have
been putting in work all month long.
We started the month with water temps in the low 80s,
and the flats were alive. Early morning sessions just after
first light became a ritual. The kind of quiet where the
only sounds are mullet skipping and the “click-click” of a
topwater plug walking the dog. It didn’t take long before
that silence was shattered by a blowup—one redfish after
another hammering Skinny Water wakebaits along the
oyster bar edges.
A lot of the action came on negative low tides. The reds
were cruising shallow, their backs barely beneath the
surface, and they couldn’t resist the slow, steady wobble
of a Skinny Water twitch bait. One morning, I watched a
school of five reds track a single plug right up to the rod
tip before the lead fish inhaled it—hookset, drag scream,
chaos.
Mid-month brought even more heat, and with it came the
shrimp hatch. Suddenly, everything was feeding—trout,
snook, ladyfish, and even juvenile tarpon. We switched
over to Skinny Water curly tail grubs rigged on 3/16oz
jigheads and started working the deeper creek mouths on
the outgoing tide. The flounder bite turned on like a
switch. We picked up several nice flounder dragging those
grubs slowly through the sand pockets—one pushing 21
inches came off a drop-off right behind a grass line.
The trout were thick too, especially early. We’d drift the
grass flats tossing paddle tails in natural colors, letting
them sink, then working them with a slow twitch.
Boom—trout after trout, with a few gators mixed in.
Snook made their presence known around dock pilings
and mangrove cuts. Skinny Water’s soft twitch baits
proved deadly when fished near structure—especially at
dusk. On one of the better evenings, we had three slot
snook come unglued on the same bait before finally
connecting on the fourth strike. That fish launched like a
mini tarpon, tail-walking all the way to the boat.
Toward the end of the month, we chased juvenile tarpon
around Matanzas Inlet. The outgoing tide was the ticket,
and though live bait was tempting, we stuck with Skinny
Water paddle tails. The key was a slow, steady retrieve
with just a slight twitch. We didn’t hook many—but the
follows and boils were enough to keep the adrenaline
If you’re hitting the water this summer:
Bring topwaters for the dawn patrol.
Rig curly tails and paddle tails for the deeper holes and
creek mouths.
Watch the tides, fish smart, and don’t be afraid to slow it
down.
July’s been hot, but the fishing’s been hotter. And with
Skinny Water Lures on the end of your line, you’re giving
yourself a real shot at something special.
Tight lines and bent rods—see y’all on the water!