More Christmas Fishing

Steve, myself, Erik, Ethan, Homey and Molly go fishing over the holiday break.. Started out in the flats, but was too cold for any action. Moved on to the inlet for some flounder fishing.....nada. Finally went down to the honey hole south of Wabasso, ended up finally getting some Jack Crevalle, Mangrove snapper and catfish.

Christmas Break

Pretty good day of fishing. Went camping with Steve and the dogs. Hooked up with a decent sheepshead, snook, and a late-night mongo redfish, caught on a fresh-water shiner.

Some Winter Inshore Fishing

Various fishing trips, pulled into one post. Start off with a small snook caught just south of Wabasso in November and a decent trout caught by Steve and Captain Molly in December.

Wabasso Trip

Well, Hurricane Noel finally blew by, and the winds have calmed down enough. Time to hit the IRL. Here's the newest member of the Whiting family, Molly.

Steve finally catches a decent redfish, 21"

One of 4 monster snook on the day.

Decent black drum. Other honorable mentions, 2 ladyfish, keeper trout, and a teeny tiny weakfish with no spots.

Bonito Swarm

Man, I have never seen so many fish breaking the surface at once. Arriving at the 8A reef, the first catch of the day ended up being this big ole barracuda.

Saturday morning there were literally hundreds, if not thousands of Bonito hitting the surface of the water like crazy! And it just continued all day.


Amazingly, we only hooked up with 3 or 4 of the feisty suckers. Man, do they fight, but scatter the minute you get near. We had 3 hits on live pinfish, broke off the lines, and we went back to trolling.

But, at least Troy got his first fish. A large fish, it gave quite the fight.

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Good trout day

While getting some pinfish for tomorrow's offshore adventure, I caught these two trout, one almost 20 inches at 1 lb, the other 24 inches at 2 lbs.

Baby Mahi Fun

Today was a great day to go fishing for mahi. We stopped by 8A reef to get a kingfish or 2, after a half hour, and catching what we thought might be skipjack tuna, we headed further out to the cones.



Finding a piece of floating bamboo, we starting casting some gulp minnows. Something shot 3 feet out of the water, and BAM! Reeled in a baby mahi.

Squish, Oops

After catching 4 of these miniatures, we trolled the cones for an hour or 2 with no luck. Headed down to Pelican Flats for the first time, and found 1 kingfish. Lesson learned, don't try to lift a 10 lb. kingfish by the leader, with a snap-swivel. Game over, fish took a nice rapala lure with it. Oh, and the tuna? Yup, just a bonito.

King of 8A

Pretty rough day at the 8A reef today. Was supposed to be 1 to 2 foot, was actually 3-4 with a heavy chop. I was really looking forward to go 25 miles out to try and get the elusive mahi, but not today. Did pretty good on the kings, we caught 3 and kept 2, the biggest was 35", 10 lbs. Trolling diving plugs again, with no hits on the ballyhoo. Was probably too choppy for a good surface bite, we should've just used plugs all day for this. I want to go bottom fishing, but today wasn't a good day to anchor.

Homey with his eyes on fresh sushi.

Catch of the day

Huntin' for Reds

On the hunt for reds, still haven't gotten one all year. Same tactics as last year, early morning fishing, hitting known redfish spots near Grant and Sebastian. Mostly using live shrimp on jigs and freeline, with 8 to 10 lb mono test with 15 lb fluor. Trying some of the gulp 5" jerk shad in chartreuse and white with a jig, gold spoons, D.O.A shrimp, no luck. I usually target reds first thing, between 6:30 and 9:30, water temperature has been pretty darn warm even then, at least 81. Next time I go for reds, i'll be targeting some deeper water near the flats, maybe they're keeping cool here.

Oh, here's my brother Brian catching a slimy sailcat. We both caught one on the day, quite a fight on 8 lb test, bit of a let down when we got them to the boat though.

Kingfishing

Time for some offshore fishing. My cousin and I take his 19 foot Sea Fox bay boat offshore to see what we can get trolling. The 8A reef out of Port Canaveral does well by us, 5 kingfish on the day, we kept 1 for some dinner. Caught on ballyhoo and diving plugs, this reef is very productive. We go another 10 miles east, and end up hooking with our first bull dolphin. Getting it to the boat, we see it's a good 3-4 feet, probably 30-35 pounds. It turns and runs, got a little slack in line and spit the 2 hooked ballyhoo. Now, I feel the dolphin-fish taunting me every week, and am just biding my time to finish the job of landing a bull.

Summer's Coming

It's been a while since the last post. Not much to speak of since then. I've been on a few fishing trips inshore, but haven't caught much. No snook, no redfish, mostly puffers, catfish, and a couple trout. I finally got something different, this ladyfish is the first I've gotten to the boat without throwing a hook, about 22 inches with the tail pinched.