This past week has been pretty tough sledding in the surf up and down Florida’s East Coast. I’ve been out in Melbourne Beach about 4 or 5 times and yesterday (Sunday) was the first “fishable” (but still weedy) day over this period. I’ll be going out today, too — I have some family visiting from Cleveland and they want to see the magic happen on the beach. Hopefully I can produce some fireworks for them!
When the weeds first set in last week, I did manage to catch a really good sized bonnethead that put up one helluva fight. It wasn’t until this most recent Easter Sunday that the weeds were clear enough to actually fish. We got a late start and didn’t get out there til about 4pm, but did come away with a nice 15.5″ whiting. We also released a little catfish.
Sand fleas remain abundant. I’ve been using just single drop loop pompano rigs (< 3" loops) to reduce weed snagging as much as possible. Even if it's better out there today, I suspect there to be a fair amount of weeds. On that note, low tide has been a good bit cleaner than high with less weeds and better water quality. I got a drone like 3 weeks ago and have been dying to deploy it on the beach, but with all the wind, it's been hard to find a window. I finally got it out there today for just a test spin and it handled 18mph wind just fine. I'm gonna take it out today and hopefully get the first of many birdseye view clips of the surf to share. We won't see winds above 6mph until after 12pm, so it should be smooth sailing! Looking forward to updating later!
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