Capt. Brian Smith/Gulf Stream Marina
Time flies when you're having fun. It seems just yesterday I was writing last weeks report. Well, between then and now many a fish has made their way across the marina cleaning board. Below the cleaning table are representatives from all the offshore and inshore species found in our waters.
Trout, between 15" and 25", are biting well off of Pepperfish Keys south of the river, as well as, at the Birdrack north of the river. Folks are doing well with plain jigs, jigs under corks, split tail shiners, and topwater plugs in the morning and evening. Candy corn has been the best jig color lately.
Redfish are nailing gold spoons, floater/diver plugs and topwater baits tossed to the edge of the shore and worked back. The best tide is incoming, especially if you like to nose up the creeks like I do.
Large bull sharks are cruising the shallows now. I've seen many in the past couple of weeks. One afternoon while redfishing, my party and I saw a seven footer milling around the creek mouth. I flipped out a dead blue runner on a 9/0 hook with 3' of #9 wire. Two minutes later the line twitched and went slack. The shark ate the bait and three foot of wire dental floss. Sorry to lead up to a battle that didn't happen, but I still imagine what explosion would have occurred if I had just 12 more inches of wire before the main line. A 150 pound fish in three foot of water; a gear burner, Florida boat ride complete with water works. Be prepared to make a memory.
Kingfish are still running flying fish and blue runners crazy. Seeing an aluminum rocket launch through a school of bait is inspiring. Capt. Bill Shearin, "Neva Miss", brought in a fine 29 pound king this Saturday. That fish wouldn't raise eye brows on the east coast but here in the left coast armpit it's a good king.
Grouper fishing has been relatively slow this weekend. Anything over five keepers in the boat constitutes a great day. Short grouper keep the action going through the day but big fish haven't been plentiful. Saturday the big bite lasted an hour then turned off. The good news is we've caught grouper in 20, 25, 32, 45, 52, and 68'. The fish are anywhere from 8 to 38 miles from shore. Long boat rides aren't necessary to start fishing. I leap frog from spot to spot grouper fishing which makes the longest boat ride the one coming in.
In general, the fishing is great and the weather is too. Come and wet a line with us in Steinhatchee.
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