Sunday afternoon: Leaving from Ponte Vedra I left for Cedar Key with my good friend Rich. Arriving in Cedar Key 3 hours later the winds were nill and the water was absolutely flat & gorgeous. With 2 hours of daylight remaining the conditions were perfect for a quick trout trip so we quickly hooked up Plan B and with a high but outgoing tide we ran 3 miles to the south of Snake Key and hit the flats.
Rich’s very first cast was a good trout and fishing in 3.5 – 5.5 feet we caught trout after trout after trout with numerous double hookups. The trout were on fire. Most of the trout were short but we kept 5 to a bit over 18 inches throwing Cajun Thunders and a jighead. My buddy Rich was using GULP and I gotta say that he was catching more trout than I until I started using GULP too. Interesting. After a bit I stopped using the GULP and the largest trout did come off a Candy Corn colored Saltwater Assassins body.
Rich pretty darned pleased with a nice trout
Rich with another
After a beautiful sunset we headed back keeping 5 chunky trout to 18+ inches. Water temperature was 62 degrees on the flats with poor water clarity, very little surface weed, and glass minnows getting chased on the surface.
Beautiful Cedar Key sunset
Me with a nice trout
After that we took the boat to refuel, picked up 2 quarts of Tony’s World’s Famous Clam Chowder to-go from Tony’s Seafood Restaurant for the wifers, had by a nice late dinner of Fried Oysters and Grouper at Coconuts restaurant and headed in for the night.
Monday A.M.: Strangely, at first light we were the only boat at the ramp and we headed out to Sea Horse Reef to catch bait. Water was dirty, tide was honking, seas were less than 2 feet, and bait catching was slow. With slack tide coming up in 90 minutes I made the decision to stop bait fishing and run to the spot and try to catch the last of the tide before slack tide shut down the grouper bite. With only 9-10 live baits we took off.
At the spot in 38 feet we started using dead sardines but only managed short gags. Wanting to change things up we started using our limited live bait. First fish was a small but legal 23” gag so I put Rich’s gag on a stringer and put her over the side hoping to be able to cull groupers. The bite was on and within minutes caught our limit of 4 gags, the largest going 28 inches (no tail pinching).
Rich with a nice 23 “ gag
Me with a 27 incher
Rich with his nice 28 incher
From there the live bait was gone and we resorted to frozen sardines and using cut white grunt for bait. We culled two 23 inch gags and replaced them with a larger fish. The stringer gags needed no reviving as they took all of 1 second to take off towards the bottom hauling butt once released. No reviving necessary.
Culling stringer
With the gags put away in the fishbox we switched gears to work on Red Grouper and started using large fillets of white grunt. That worked but at first we only managed to catch sub legal reds.
Neat photo of a small red caught eating a white grunt sandwich w/sargassum lettuce
Putting on a grunt head it took all of 5 seconds once it hit the bottom to be engulfed by a 21 inch red which went into the fishbox.
Interesting photo of the mouth gap of a red grouper caught using a white grunt head (pictured)
With time running out we slipped over to some smaller bottom relief to catch more live bait. We caught a couple of squirrelfish (aka grouper candy) and a couple of porgies. We then stopped at another spot not too far away and the bite was on again.
Grouper Candy
Rich put on the first squirrelfish and had an immediate strong hit. This 28 inch gag put up a good fight. This gag was released after a photo since we already had four gag in the box; two of which were smaller than this gag.
Rich’s released 28 inch gag
The second squirrel fish resulted in another 28 inch gag which was also released. The third fish went 26 inches and was caught on a live porgy (also released). Reusing live baits like this one pictured below we caught a couple more legal but smaller gags too (released).
Neat photo of a 26 inch gag using a porgy (released)
The fourth live bait was the last porgy and that caught another nice 26 inch gag too that had another porgy tail sticking out of its gullet (also released). Pretty wild to be releasing such nice grouper!
Hungry gag – one in the throat and one on a hook
Sadly, we had to stop fishing and leave them biting at 1:30 p.m. so we could return to Ponte Vedra for a Monday evening Boy Scout meeting. AM inshore water temperature was 61.4 degrees with offshore temps of 64.1 degrees. Low and high tide was at 0910 (-0.3 ft) and 1532 hours (3.1 ft) respectively with a tidal range of 3.4 feet. Winds were lite out of the southeast and less than 2 feet. Ran a total of 50 miles for the two trips and the weather was outstanding. We had a great trout bite and a stellar grouper bite! Fall Cedar Key fishing at its best!!
***Don’t ever forget that you Big Benders are lucky to have some great near shore fishing!!
Hoo Yah!!
Brian
