This week in the Melbourne Beach surf, sand fleas remained hard to come by. At least for me — until Sunday when they made themselves abundant in number and in good size. Maybe they were triggered by the full moon…

I fished twice the past week — on Friday AM and Sunday PM. We did pretty well on Friday with my good friend visiting from Jacksonville. They’re not catching pompano in Duuuval right now, and my buddy had to come down and see it to believe it. We caught 5 pompano, 3 of which were keepers. We didn’t have a choice of time in the fishing, and ended up on the beach during the least ideal stretch of the day, from around 10am to 2pm. It was outgoing tide, which I definitely do not prefer, but it didn’t ultimately really matter. We struggled to find a flea here and there, but we got by just fine with some blanched reserves and our new favorite manufactured surf bait, FishGum.

On Sunday, we didn’t fish as long — from about 5pm to 7pm. Caught about 900 catfish, but we also caught our beefiest pompano of the week, a really nice whiting, and some bait-sized croaker. Also, the sand fleas were back in full force! Hopefully they stick around for a while!