St. Joe Bay June 17 - 23 Fishing and Weather Report
Posted: June 27th, 2007, 9:20 am
I spent last week at my wife's annual family reunion on Cape San Blas. Heres a brief report on the fishing and the weather. The first of the week, we watched from the balcony of our rental house as a storm front dropped four of these bad boys all at the same time. Two of them combined to form the larger one on the left of this photo:
Once the weather calmed down we broke out the kayaks and began to hit the bay each day for a trout run. We started out the first two days launching at the kayak / canoe launch at the South end of the bay. We fished the tides and struggled to get our limits on those days. We did catch some flounder around the long dock at the fire tower and some decent sized trout. There was a LOT of live bait around the Pig Island area and in Eagle Harbor.
As the week went on, we figured out that our best bite was happening early in the day, so we began to get up about 5:00 am and hit the water by 6:00 am. We also lauched over near Presnell's for the last few trips of the week. Once we moved our trips to earlier in the day, we had no trouble getting our limits by 10 or 11:00 am., regardless of which side of the bay we fished.
Live bait and artificials seemed to work equally well, although the pinfish and small trout would drive you nuts if you fished the Gulp baits. Here's some pics of one of our catches:
The largest of the fish we caught were a little over 24", but we caught many over 20". I should mention also that the bay was loaded with sharks. If you go in a kayak, do not keep your fish on a stringer. We had to get collapsable coolers to keep from getting our fish stolen, and some of the sharks were 6' or better. We also got hit by sharks on the live bait enough that we began to instantly break them off rather than loose $20 worth of Power Pro each time.
We didn't see a lot of scallops, but we didn't look for them either.
Good Fishin -
Steve Stinson
Once the weather calmed down we broke out the kayaks and began to hit the bay each day for a trout run. We started out the first two days launching at the kayak / canoe launch at the South end of the bay. We fished the tides and struggled to get our limits on those days. We did catch some flounder around the long dock at the fire tower and some decent sized trout. There was a LOT of live bait around the Pig Island area and in Eagle Harbor.
As the week went on, we figured out that our best bite was happening early in the day, so we began to get up about 5:00 am and hit the water by 6:00 am. We also lauched over near Presnell's for the last few trips of the week. Once we moved our trips to earlier in the day, we had no trouble getting our limits by 10 or 11:00 am., regardless of which side of the bay we fished.
Live bait and artificials seemed to work equally well, although the pinfish and small trout would drive you nuts if you fished the Gulp baits. Here's some pics of one of our catches:
The largest of the fish we caught were a little over 24", but we caught many over 20". I should mention also that the bay was loaded with sharks. If you go in a kayak, do not keep your fish on a stringer. We had to get collapsable coolers to keep from getting our fish stolen, and some of the sharks were 6' or better. We also got hit by sharks on the live bait enough that we began to instantly break them off rather than loose $20 worth of Power Pro each time.
We didn't see a lot of scallops, but we didn't look for them either.
Good Fishin -
Steve Stinson
