jetty anglers

Happy anglers down visiting from Maryland had a good day on the water fishing for black drum and sheepshead with Fishing Devotion Charters off the tip of the north jetty.

Good morning, all my Sebastian Inlet fishaholics! I hope everyone had a great weekend! Here we go with this week’s installment on “what’s up at the inlet.”

The last five days I have been down there has been some action, just not anything to write a book about, but steady non the less. One day good, one day bad, one day good, and so forth. You just have to be there when the fish decide to bite. There has been a smattering of different species wanting to play, but like I said, not a lot, just enough to keep you interested. The majority of the good fish biting have been the black drum, and a few sheepshead on sand fleas and shrimp. A couple of pompano have been taken, as well. Beach side of the jetty on the outgoing tide has been the time.

Along with that, the stingrays have been out of control, and everywhere, but not every day. One day I was down I saw one angler catch two at the same time on a double drop rig!! Crazy. Also being a problem were the bonnet head and Atlantic sharp nose sharks eating everything. If you want, you are allowed to keep one of those per person per day, and they have NO size limit on them. They are good to eat, as long as you get the guts out quickly, and get them on ice right away!

Also biting are the small bluefish in the 12-13 inch range, alone with some jack crevalle and blue runners, also on any bait you are using. The big blues did make an appearance again, but didn’t stay very long, only a couple were caught on large silver spoons. Incoming tide was the time for them. As for the flounder bite, it hasn’t been very good, with the ones being caught small, 15 inches to undersized mostly.

The snook season opened on Saturday with a few fish being caught, but most were too big to keep. And several being undersized. Live shrimp and flair hawks were getting the bites. And on that note about fishing for snook, there were a couple of “young guns” I call them, out there on the jetty fishing for the big blues with Gotcha lures, they have very sharp hooks, and one of them snagged a snook, it was too big and it went back in the water, they started fishing again with the gotchas, you reel them pretty quicky and jerk then quickly so they dart from side to side to work properly, and they snagged another snook, too big and went back in the water. So I watched these guys and they figured out that there was probably a school of snook out there where they were casting, and purposely started snagging snook! Apparently there was a school of them out there on the beach side sitting in the warm water, is why they were able to snag them. NOTICE, if you do happen to accidentally foul hook a snook while you are fishing for other fish, or them, if it is in season, and in slot, you can keep it, BUT, if you are purposely trying to snag one out of a school of them you know is there, that is ILLEGAL in the FWC rules and regulations! It states NO snagging / snatch hooking of snook is permitted! If someone calls the FWC, and they see you do it, it is a fisheries violation, subject to citation. Please don’t treat our snook like that. Now back to the fishing.

The incoming tide along the shoreline from the jetty back to the t dock has also been a hit or mis deal. You just have to be in a spot when the fish come by. Sheepshead, black drum, and whiting have been being caught on cut shrimp and sand fleas. I also heard about a couple small redfish caught, and they are still in a closed season. The flounder have been absent for the most part, but some of the smaller ones are being caught back by the ranger work area in the sandy area. Back at the t dock on either tide I saw over the last several days quite a few nice black drum, sheepshead and whiting being caught on cut shrimp. Not much else except for the pesky puffers.

So folks, that’s it for this weeks report, getting better as the water warms back up some. It was 60 pretty much all last week, except for Thursday it went up to 62, and now it is showing 63 as of this report. And the weather for the next week and a half looks to be pretty promising with light winds under 10mph, and small waves at the surf. So maybe we are on the upswing for a change. I wish everyone a great and safe week!