A unique website dedicated to fishing information from Florida's Northern Big Bend. This includes the area from the Econfina River west to the Apalachicola River
Use this area to post inshore fishing reports from the area. Please try to include relevant information such as:
Location, date, time, water conditions, weather conditions, baits, techniques, species caught, etc.
We were waiting at the gate to St. Marks when it opened this morning. The early crowd was very prompt, polite and professional. We were in the water by 6:15 with no problems and front row parking. I knew it would be crowded today so we went East (a long way). Stopped past Gray Mare and fished in about 6' - 8'. We boated 14 trout and one huge Spanish by 9:00. The trout were all on gulp fished near the bottom with 1/8 oz head. Lots of shorts and one decent keeper for supper. No corks other than live bait rig that caught the Spanish. It got hot and started getting crowded, so we moved over toward Gray Mare and went for a swim. The scallops were in pretty fair numbers and we had all we wanted in about an hour and a half. We moved back out to deep water cleaned a few scallops and picked up anouther trout and another spanish. I looked to the west and it looked like a false horizon. I have never seen that many boats anchored in that small of an area. This is when the fun began. It was quite an obsticle course coming in. We zigged and zagged all the way back to the light house and what a mess we found there. At 1:30 there were 23 boats in the pool and it was low tide. Some wouldn't crank, some wouldn't move and most had no idea what they were doing. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. There was some of all of these
Thankfully we slid in, got in line and left without incident (1 hour later). There were trailers parked all the way to the light house and up the road toward the gate for a half mile.
Here is a poor picture of the St. Marks boat show (lense was dirty). There must have been close to 1000 boats out there in front of Stony Bayou. I will not do that again. Fishing was great, scallops were great, crowd was just too much to handle at the ramp
"Support the country you live in OR live in the country you support!!!!"
Where were you in line at the gate this morning? I was the first truck with a boat at the gate, there was one truck ahead of me but I think they had a kayak. It was a madhouse out there a buddy wants me to take him out next saturday but I might have to pass until scallop season is over. I kinda used it as a guide as where to fish I figure if theres all these people splashing around in one area they probably scared the trout out deeper. I caught 8 in about 8-10 feet of water, 2 keepers.
T Smith - I was about 4th or 5th in this morning. My fishing partner was right behind you in a big white dodge 4 door. Everyone there at 6:00 did a great job of getting launched in a hurry and getting out of the way.
At 1:30 I acctually saw someone stuck who pulled down beside the ramp to jump their boat off
"Support the country you live in OR live in the country you support!!!!"
Ok, I actually spoke with him briefly. He was pulled up on the side of the road right in front of the gate house and I pulled up to see if the gate was open. Then I realized I couldn't see well enough in the dark to back up. I didn't want him to think I was trying to cut in front of him. Yea going out was fine at the ramp, but coming in was pretty crazy with people trying to put in and leave at the same time. When I went in about 12:30 there was a FWC Center Console in there trying to keep the peace, but they were in a 23' seacraft with twin 200 mercs so they were kinda just in the way and part of the problem. With the tide being low the canal was pretty much 1 lane and it was a steady stream of boats trying to come in and go out, crazy.
Did you get any pictures of the chaos at the lighthouse pool?
