This Saturday morning get ready to launch on an -0.7 ultra-low tide, that’s if you can get your boat in the water, with the incoming ever so slowly building throughout the day to a 2.2 high by midnight. Expect near same conditions for Sunday along with a full moon.

The upside of super low tides is it concentrates the inshore fish into obvious locations and once found can provide fast fishing. For the first time in a while at least you know where the fish aren’t.

Negative tides can also be a plus for the avid pole and sight angler looking for waving redfish tails glistening in the morning dawn as there won’t be any water under the mangroves to hide these chow hounds. (Remember to check moving mullet schools for redfish, snook and trout hitchhikers – always worth a few casts)

Negative tide days can be especially useful to the new area boater as well. This is a great day to not concentrate on fishing but instead choosing to take a boat ride to get a good idea of the lay of the land, showing cuts, ditches, exposed structure, deeper holes and vegetation normally not seen during high water conditions. Make notes, take pictures, check different ramps for future low water launching limitations, mark your maps and enter GPS numbers of anything interesting to return to or areas and items to avoid.

This is also a day to get an honest evaluation of your boat’s true shallow water capabilities, but proceed with caution as it’s also a time to lose a prop or lower unit if you don’t practice common sense as there’s still a lot of floating and submerged items waiting to surprise you and your new, shiny and very expensive engine and hull.

Pleasure boaters in larger vessels will do well to not stray from marked channels, especially traveling through south Matlacha Pass in the early part of the day. Here a single foot or two off course could mean grounding or at least a good sanding of your hull’s gel coat. If you’re going too fast, you’re putting not only your boat in danger but also yourself and your passengers.

Currently Boca Grande Pass and any structures associated with the pass are holding the biggest numbers of sheepshead without having to travel out to our nearshore reefs where they have been staging. Further inshore, smaller specimens have been showing up around bars and docks but sizes will increase in the coming weeks.

Sheepshead are smart, line shy, hard fighting, armor clad fish but best of all, good on the plate. There’s an eight fish daily limit per angler with a 12 inch minimum length to harvest.

In 1981, Mr. Eugene Lechler caught a 15-pound, 13-ounce fish to set the long and still standing Florida state record. Not to be outdone, the following year Wayne Desselle caught a New Orleans trash can lid-sized sheepie to set a new and also still standing world record of 21 pounds, 4 ounces. Caught, on a dead shrimp.

Only three more red snapper weekends left for this year so hopefully the winds won’t keep the fleet at the dock. If you can, get out and explore the 120 to 150-foot depths for a great variety of beautiful red and mangrove snappers, king mackerel, African pompano and one of my favorite fish to eat, hogfish.

This bottom feeding usually colorful oddball will take a variety of dead baits as well as hit jigging spoons and soft plastics as long as they are fished near bottom. Spearing is allowed. Absolutely delicious!

A great fighter and almost as good tasting offshore target, the African pompano, is swimming in local waters in those same 120-foot areas. These fish not only fight hard and taste great, but can get rather big like the 50-pound, 8-ounce world record. Two per angler, and/or two per vessel, with a 24-inch fork length.

Capt. George Tunison is a Cape Coral resident fishing guide. You can contact him at 239-579-0461 or via email at captgeorget3@aol.com.