The surf has been a little up and down this week. Well, not so much up, but it’s definitely ranged from “meh” to “mehhhh.”

Bait on the Beach

That being said, the entirety of this past week was RIDICULOUS for our swash dwelling friends, the sand fleas. Here in south Melbourne Beach, the BIG MOMMA fleas were XXXL and they consistently loaded the beach. As of Monday, I haven’t seen or heard any sign of that slowing down, but I have heard reports from all over the county reporting similar observations of size and quantity.

Some real nice specimens this week

Bait fish on and off the beach have been spotty, frequenting greater depths past the bar. When you see them, you know it, and you better be ready to jump right in on the action. I’ve been on aerial bait patrol most mornings, and it really has been difficult to parse together a pattern with any consistently or reliability.

Surf Catching

Our BOY, Spacefish’s own, Knox Robinson, came out to the beach with his two boys, ready to rock and roll on in the Melby Beach Thursday. We didn’t have much time. My gear and general mental space was still in disarray following a trip the previous day, so the word of the day was definitely not efficiency. Yet with little time, we prevailed, catching the first keeper sized pompano I’ve seen in about 2 weeks. We also caught a whiting, a crab, and some other little dinks. Good times!

11" pompano

Just over 11″ to fork — let’s go!

Moving into the weekend, the water was a little dirtier than expected, but what caught me off guard was the ungodly, unending barrage of catfish lurking in the clouded murk of the surf. I can’t tell you how many catfish we caught on Saturday because I literally can’t count that high. I recently went like five months without seeing a single catfish at the beach to now flirting with triple digits in a single session of fishing. On Saturday, we had some young kids in the group, so there wasn’t really any options to where we could pivot. So we didn’t. But rods were bending all afternoon and the young’ens got to see some sea turtles, so it all worked out alright.

Summertime patterns continue, but hopefully we are able to maintain some clean, weed-free water and get into some great surf fishing this week. I’m still after my first snook of the surf spawning season, hopefully I’ll get’r done!