PORT CHARLOTTE, FL — Charlotte Harbor's longest-running fishing-report franchise, Fishin' Frank's Fishin' Club, opened its May 8, 2026 livestream with a story most south-west Florida shop owners would not lead with — an arapaima session at a private pond in Arcadia, in the company of DOA Lures founder Mark Nichols. From there, host Frank rolled into the place-by-place breakdown that has built the show's audience and flagged an unusual bull-shark run pushing up the Peace River.
The opener at Jurassic Jewels — a stocked pond fishery about 30 to 40 minutes inland — produced a fish Frank put between 200 and 300 pounds. He was honest about the format: with arapaima at the size these ponds hold, the cost of feeding and protecting the fish is reflected in the trip price.
"You can pay for different sized fish," Frank said. "When these fish get up to 200, 300 pounds, that's a lot of money tied up in a fish. They have to raise them for years and feed them and take care of them. Me, I like the 30, 40, maybe 60 to 80 pounds. They're the most fun, because you can use a little lighter tackle."
DOA's Mark Nichols was running a Bait Buster soft-plastic — the same swimbait that has built a quiet reputation for arapaima travelling anglers chasing the species in South America. "If you're paying all that money to fly to South America and cross borders and go fishing in the creeks, make sure you got a root beer DOA Bait Buster with you," Frank said. "Any colour will work, but the root beer seems to be the best one."
The place-by-place was the meat of the report. On the Peace River from Harbor Heights upstream to Shell Creek, Frank's crew is hearing about snook around the dam and small tarpon on the bend, with snapper, small redfish, snook and the odd jack stacking up at the Sansushi trestle. The water-treatment-plant stretch is fishing well, but the standout — and the surprise — is bull sharks.
"The bull sharks are going nuts up there," Frank told viewers. "I don't know what it is about this year, but we've heard of more sharks up there than I've heard of in the last 20 years."
Under Highway 75, the bite has been weirdly quiet for black drum but consistent for redfish on the northbound side along the saw-grass flats. Shrimp continues to do most of the work for Peace River anglers, and the wider takeaway is that bait choice is more about timing than species.
"Shrimp just works," Frank said. "It works all year. White bait will work all year, but sometimes in the year it just doesn't work as well as shrimp. At different times, pinfish is the best out of all of them, or crabs, or whatever. It changes all year, but every bait works all year. It just works much better at some times."
The Highway 41 bridge into Port Charlotte is where the report turned hot. Several cobia have come off the bridge structure this week, with one nine-year-old angler landing a 37-inch fish from the bridge with his father. Frank dropped Google Earth onto the screen and walked viewers through the topography that has produced cobia under the bridge for years.
"This is the most likely place for cobia to be coming in and under," he said. "It can be anywhere along the bridge, but so often this is like 3 to 4 feet of water and this is 8 to 10. So along this ledge, that's where the vast majority of the cobia over the years have been caught."
His recommendation for anglers heading out: stay on the deep side of the manatee-zone marker, drop a bait three to four feet under a bobber, or run a slow troll along the drop-off itself. Spanish mackerel, lady fish and a five-foot bull shark have also come off the bridge this week, and Bayshore's piling clusters — quiet on Frank's first read — are reportedly holding fish across the run.