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
The last 3 times I’ve been fishing the wind has been worse than the dang flats in March. Granted I was in 3 of the wide spots where it happens, but I’d never seen it like this in June.
2 of the times I was hanging out on the dock at Nutall Rise waiting for mullet. The first time I had to leave because I couldn’t see for the wind. Today was the same way but the tide was low enough that I could at least see that there were no mullet.
The other time was at Goose Pasture and there were a ton out there. The dang wind was so bad though...I couldn’t see the 2 feet in front of me let alone cast precisely. I did hang 1 and he got off which was enough to keep me sitting there until almost dark. Before that though, I hoped the wind would quit in a few minutes after throwing the chum out or an hour or whatever so I paddled over to a slough and normal fished. I caught 8 good bream and 2 good Smallmouths that went back, plus other small bream that went back. So that was the good part in spite of the wind. The bad part was that the tons of mullet out there couldn’t see me for the wind. I paddled on top of 2 separate groups before they hauled tail even. Then when I sat somewhere they would get right beside the boat and not see me then bolt like they usually would. If I would have had the castnet I could have loaded the boat in a minute in that rare, unique situation. Dang dang dang.
8-8-23 mullet fishing at Goose Pasture in this same wind that I just don’t understand. I mean what in the ^%*$ is this stuff in the middle of the summer. It finally started raining and I was so mad I refused to leave and waited it out thinking it would be calm after the storm. It was…for about 20 minutes before it started up again.
I’ll get to the rest of today in a minute after I explain last week. Last week I got to Goose Pasture early and dumped out my mullet chum and left it while I went on my Cow Creek paddle trip. I made that fine and 1 more thing is off the list. It was neat and there was good fishing. I got back to Goose Pasture and caught a huge mullet pretty fast over the chum. I was straight beat after paddling back up though so I left thinking I could come back and load up.
Boy was a wrong. You about couldn’t cast a 1/2 Oz Little George in that crap let alone a mullet rig. I was being blown upriver with the anchor out. There was mullet everywhere, but they never really settled down at the chum like they usually do. When I clearly wasn’t going to catch jack I went ahead and tried something that I hadn’t tried in years - the inline spinner. Because of the wind I put a dang slip weight on it. I didn’t catch any but I got 1 to follow it almost every time, and a few of them took a swing at it but never hooked up. That was enough to keep me out there until almost dark when the wind quit at the end for a few minutes.
Last edited by BloodyChamp on August 15th, 2023, 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
BloodyChamp…a mullet rig? You were fishing for mullet? I have never heard of them eating bait. Not planning on fishing for them but would love to hear what you were actually using.
Yeah I catch the heck out of mullet…………when conditions are right. They haven’t been right this year and there’s no tweaking to catch atleast 1 like you might fishing for anything else, not in my experience anyway. I’m actually sitting down here at Goose Pasture now in the truck. This place is just snake bit this year. It’s monsooning. I did have a good hour of calm weather before this but I also had some fool put his boat in and go up the river, then come back down on the opposite side where I was fishing less than 10 minutes later. If I’d have had something to throw at him I would have threw it.
My mullet rig, when I’m not just using bait on a hook is a small inline spinner with a piece of bait on the end. They’ll follow it pretty often which makes you keep trying. They don’t actually bite it as often. It’s almost like they’re just more curious than hungry for it.
