{
  "feed": "articles",
  "site": "https://www.tidesandtails.net",
  "description": "Editorial articles on boats, gear and inshore technique, full text included.",
  "docs": "https://www.tidesandtails.net/llms.txt",
  "index": "https://www.tidesandtails.net/feed/index.json",
  "license": "Free to read and cite with attribution to Tides & Tails (tidesandtails.net).",
  "generated": "2026-09-11T05:50:31.759Z",
  "count": 4,
  "items": [
    {
      "slug": "choosing-an-inshore-boat",
      "title": "Choosing an Inshore Boat: Bay Boats, Flats Skiffs and Everything Between",
      "category": "Boats",
      "updated": "Aug 2026",
      "teaser": "Draft, deadrise and honesty about where you actually fish — a plain-English guide to the inshore hull spectrum.",
      "body": "Every inshore boat is a compromise between two numbers: how skinny it floats and how dry it rides. A poling skiff drafting 8 inches will put you on tailing redfish a bay boat can never touch — and beat you to death crossing an open bay in 20 mph wind. A 24-foot bay boat shrugs off that chop and carries four anglers, but the flats at the back of the marsh are off the menu. Start by writing down where you fished your last ten trips, not where you dream of fishing, and the right hull usually names itself.\n\nFor most Tides & Tails waters — St. Andrew Bay, Apalachicola, Galveston — the honest answer is the middle of the spectrum: an 18–22 foot bay boat or hybrid with 10–14 inches of draft, a tunnel or jack plate if you push into the marsh, and enough freeboard for the afternoon slop. Buy the trailer, the wiring and the transom condition, not the gelcoat; a clean used hull with a healthy modern four-stroke beats a shiny rig with a tired two-stroke every time.\n\nBudget beyond the boat: trolling motor, shallow-water anchor, and a basic sonar/GPS will do more for your catch rate than another two feet of hull. And if the math still hurts, remember that a pedal kayak and this site’s tide pages catch a shocking number of the fish featured in our reports.",
      "url": "https://www.tidesandtails.net/articles/choosing-an-inshore-boat"
    },
    {
      "slug": "kayak-fishing-setup",
      "title": "The Complete Inshore Kayak Setup: Rigging for Salt Without Sinking Your Wallet",
      "category": "Kayak",
      "updated": "Jul 2026",
      "teaser": "From hull choice to anchor trolleys to the safety kit that isn’t optional — rigging a saltwater fishing kayak the right way.",
      "body": "Stability first, speed second, storage third — that’s the inshore kayak hierarchy. A 12–13 foot pedal-drive hull in the 34–36 inch beam range lets you fight a bull red standing up and still cover the two miles to the far flat. Paddle kayaks absolutely still catch fish (and cost half as much); just be realistic about wind, current and how far your shoulders will take you on a July afternoon.\n\nRig for the salt specifically: an anchor trolley so you can position against wind AND tide, a 6–8 foot stakeout pole for water under three feet, and a leash on everything you can’t swim after. Keep the deck nearly bare — one rod in hand, one in a holder, a small tackle tray of jigheads, plastics, a spoon and a topwater. Every extra gadget is another snag point when a fish goes under the hull.\n\nThe non-negotiables: a properly fitted PFD worn (not strapped to the deck), a whistle, a 360° light for pre-dawn launches, and a float plan texted to someone every single trip. Saltwater kayak fishing is gloriously simple; the safety kit is what keeps it that way.",
      "url": "https://www.tidesandtails.net/articles/kayak-fishing-setup"
    },
    {
      "slug": "nearshore-techniques",
      "title": "Nearshore Techniques: Fishing the First Mile Off the Beach",
      "category": "Techniques",
      "updated": "Jun 2026",
      "teaser": "Cobia runs, Spanish blitzes, tarpon strings and bottom fish — how to fish the strip of water between the surf and the horizon.",
      "body": "The first mile off the beach is the most under-fished water on the coast. Inshore boats can reach it on calm days, and it hosts genuine events: the spring cobia migration parading westward down the Panhandle beaches, Spanish mackerel shredding glass minnows off every pier, and early-summer tarpon strings rolling just beyond the outer bar. The skill is less about spots than about looking — birds, bait showers, color changes and shadows moving under the surface.\n\nRig a \"ready rod\" before you leave the dock: a 3 oz bucktail or big swimbait tied on heavy leader, drag set, kept where you can pitch it in five seconds. Nearshore shots are sudden and brief. For the blind-fishing hours between sightings, drag spoons behind trolling weights for Spanish and kings, or drop squid and cut bait on the countless small live-bottom patches your sonar will stumble across.\n\nRespect the weather window above all. A morning that starts glassy can turn into a 3-foot wind chop by 1 p.m., and an 18-foot bay boat has no business in that. Check the marine forecast, watch the sea-breeze clock in summer, and let the Gulf close the door with you already back inside the pass.",
      "url": "https://www.tidesandtails.net/articles/nearshore-techniques"
    },
    {
      "slug": "seasonal-strategies",
      "title": "Seasonal Strategies: A Year on the Inshore Calendar",
      "category": "Strategy",
      "updated": "May 2026",
      "teaser": "Water temperature — not the calendar — runs the inshore year. Here’s the four-season playbook from 55°F to 85°F.",
      "body": "Winter is a depth game. Trout, reds and black drum slide into holes, river bends and dark-bottom flats that soak up sun, and the entire sport slows to a crawl: suspending twitchbaits with painful pauses, dead shrimp barely moving on bottom. The reward is the biggest trout of the year in the skinniest water, on the warmest afternoon of a three-day warming trend.\n\nSpring and fall are the movement seasons — fish transitioning between winter refuges and summer patterns, feeding hard the whole way. Spring means pompano and cobia running the beaches while trout fan out over greening grass flats; fall stacks the deck even higher with bull reds at the passes, the flounder run, and shrimp flushing out of every marsh drain with birds overhead. If you can only fish sixty days a year, spend forty of them in October, November, April and May.\n\nSummer compresses everything into the edges of the day. Dawn topwater, deep grass by nine, dock lights after dark; in between, the smart moves are croaker-soaking deep shell (Texas), tarpon at the passes (Florida), or simply being off the water when the afternoon storms build. Watch water temperature on our location pages — when it crosses 85°F, fish the night and the first hour, and give the fish (and yourself) the middle of the day off.",
      "url": "https://www.tidesandtails.net/articles/seasonal-strategies"
    }
  ]
}