And so it continues. Very little business, and really entertaining fishing. The latter part of October and all of November had much cooler weather than is typical with many overnight lows dipping into the low fifties and upper forties. This had the effect of kicking off the winter fishing much earlier than is normal. The big schools of jacks arrived, spanish mackerel and bluefish, pompano, ladyfish all in attendance, big numbers of sailfish being posted by the bait guys, and we posted the earliest spinner shark release last week that I can remember. I’m hoping the spinner sharks are going to make up in a small part for arriving late the past two years by showing up a month early this year.
I have only managed about a dozen trips, both paying and not, since my last post, and not two days were similar due to the huge variety of things to do. One day was jacks charging teaser plugs inside the ICW and around the inlet. Next day was spanish mackerel, pompano, bluefish and spinner sharks. On days with a calm enough offshore, dolphin fishing has stayed very consistent. Deep drifting the reefs and wrecks also red hot. Had one very funny day on the beach that the pompano were so thick, they were skipping,(when spooked by a boat driving near them, pompano will launch out of the water, then skip on their sides like a stone) ten at a time as I drove through the schools. We had several actually jump straight into the boat, and I managed several more with the landing net. Lost a big permit that day also.
On one solo trip in search of just some fish to take home for dinner,( snapper/grouper were the intended targets) I was waylaid by amberjacks. Not sure why, but they took a keen interest in a small Clouser, not the typical fly for fish up to forty pounds! Ended up with six, including a double header that must have been pretty hilarious to watch, but in retrospect was a little silly. I was bringing in a smallish AJ of about ten pounds and he had a buddy of around twenty lbs following him. Managed to get another fly rod out and hook up the follower, then found my hands to be literally full. Ended up having to pop the leader on the first fish in order to fight the second. Fun stuff.
Yesterday was as epic as it gets. Huge schools of small sardines were getting balled up and hammered by everything under the sun. Big albies flying out of the water, monster packs of good sized jacks charging around like lawnmowers from hell, spanish and king mackerel launching skyward. There were even sailfish in water less than ten feet deep getting their share. I ran seven miles of beach and could not find the end of it.
I’m going to need a therapist if I have to watch all this good fishing going untouched…..