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
With everything flooded the last 2 years etc etc etc. And in the place I was fishing, which you can guess, it was to black for mullet fishing. I hate going fishing in the same place over and over so it is on next week. I saw today that the Aucilla is finally right again on my way to Goose Pasture. I haven’t been there in 3 years unless you count a Half Mile Rise trip and a trip to 1 of the other big sinkholes last spring before we flooded out. I did go to the St Marks last July and do ok but I got enough of that place fast when the bees attacked and messed me all up.
I caught 12 solid Stumpknockers at Goose Pasture today and as soon as I had those I started fooling with the mullet even though I had no worms or chum. I got 1 to follow the spinner with a piece of bacon fat on the end of it. That tells me they’d probably cooperate with better preparation. I only had bacon fat because I considered catfishing, not thinking everything would be dropped down so fast since last time. Mullet were everywhere, and I say everywhere even by Goose Pasture standards. If I would have had my longer paddle on I could have bopped them in the head they were so thick. The only thing was that they were all in the grass and haven’t fanned out their places yet. I’ll give Goose Pasture a rest for a couple weeks and do normal fishing then go back and try to load up on mullet. Hopefully they’ll have some spots fanned out then. This is if we don’t have a Cat 5 hurricane or anything that week to week typical these days.
6-12 I went to the upper Aucilla for the first time since it flooded before this time. So it’d been about 3 years as I said in the first post, and it wasn’t quite right yet by the eye test. On top of that a tree was down at all 3 landings I checked out. I almost said forget it and just didn’t go but I’m glad I got on up and went because I tore um up.
I had what I considered an expendable lure on considering the conditions. If it were to get hung up under water it would be gone because I wasn’t getting out in high swift water, and whatever calm water I found would surely have Black Attacks in it. Well I only caught one of those and it was my own fault because it was way way way back up in the woods up the banks. Besides that I absolutely tore the bream up. I also caught a fat Warmouth Perch and lost the world record Warmout Perch or Speckled Perch. He grabbed it and that rod bent over like a bass had it. I thought sure I could wear him out and I was wrong. Just as I got him to the boat he took off again and pew the lure flew up. Somewhere in the middle I saw the outline of a giant Perch or panfish of some kind when I got him to his highest point.
I’d caught a few until that point but I wasn’t exactly tearing them up yet. I was in the place I wanted to go after paddling up but I had those few and not anything above average size. I figure ok I caught a few and lost a big one…not bad for all this high water. And I figured I could definitely catch more with live bait.
So I started back fishing to the truck and I started pulling in giant Redbreast after giant Redbreast. I let them all go because I had enough normal sized ones to eat, plus I also caught a few more normal sized ones. I’m almost glad I lost the first big one because it being so slow until then I probably would have kept it. I don’t think my honey hole had ever been outdone by the paddle back to the truck before but that’s how it went that day for some reason. It will only get better though because there was still a heap of water.
