By MEL BERMAN

This weekend’s conditions represent the perfect fishing scenario.

Water temperatures now in the 70s, light winds, plus a strong incoming morning tide. Fishing that incoming tide this week with captain Brent Gaskill and his client, Mark Carlson of Dover, Del., we set up on a series of crunchy oyster bars along the western shore of Tampa Bay.

We knew the spot was going to produce because we observed numerous large mullet jumping all over the place. Using dead cut bait; the three of us caught several larger reds, many too big to keep.

I also landed one using a MirrOlure Top Pup that was right at the 27-inch line and it was released.

Tampa’s Gary Poyssick tells me that he’s also finding reds all over the bay. He added that “there’s so much bait in the bay that the fish aren’t hungry in some places.”

Fishing with a friend and his uncle, they ran into a school of mackerel that Poyssick described as about “a quarter-mile round — all the fish in the 3- to 5-pound range, and fierce.” He said “the macks were on the northwest side of the Howard Frankland Bridge in that sort of pan, between it and the west side of the Courtney Campbell causeway.

Lance Benzell of Sarasota ran offshore and into a massive school of hungry kingfish, landing several up to 50 inches. It’s only a matter of days before the kings show up closer to shore.

Hear “The Captain Mel Show” Saturdays from 6-9 a.m. on WFLA, 970 AM. Also, visit “Fishing Florida OnLine Magazine” at capmel.com.