Turkey Point Flats 10/2-4
Posted: October 6th, 2004, 10:55 am
My first post here on Inshore Fishing Reports; this is exciting. We set out from St Teresa Saturday Morning at first light headed to the flats. We had some live shrimp and some dead shrimp and soon caught a few pin fish to go along with our shrimp. We fished the outside of the flats in the morning and the inside in the afternoon except on Monday we didn’t fish in the afternoon. Saturday and Sunday were great but on Monday the wind blew out of the East and killed our fishing. All we caught on Monday was one nice redfish and two keeper trout. We didn’t keep count on Saturday and Sunday as we were doing the catch and release thing but we caught Trout, mackerel, redfish, skipjack, bluefish, shark, flounder, catfish, and one small rock bass. We each saw, but did not catch, a monster trout; I had no idea that trout got that big. When we hit the right spots the trout were biting very well and most were of legal size. I think we caught a total of 4 mackerel and 5 redfish, all the redfish were good sized fish; we caught all the mackerel on the outside of the flats and all the redfish on the inside. The sharks were a lot of fun, we caught one each and mine pushed the limit of my 6 Lb test line; we also saw several larger sharks. I haven’t done a lot of fishing in the past 20 years nor had my partner so we lost a lot we should have caught. My old 9.9 Mercury seems to be running OK for now and I have the leaks in my 14 ft. aluminum boat under control so I’ll be fishing every chance I get 
. The FSU Marine Biology Lab is just west of that. My theory, supported by a little research, is that as the tide falls the fish at the bottom of the food chain move off the shoal so we fished the outside of the shoal on the falling tide. That is where we had the best luck except with redfish. We tried to stay in 5 to 6 feet of water. In the afternoon we had a rising tide and we fished the inside of the shoal, between the shoal and Turkey Point. It was calmer there and the fishing wasn’t bad. At one point when the tide was high we moved on to the shoal and drifted across some of it. There were some reds on the flats as well as sharks and some small trout but we did just as well in the grass bed on the inside edge of the shoal. I would like to try the west end of the shoal between the shoal and the channel that comes out of the FSU Marine Biology Lab but we didn’t make it over there this trip. BTW at low tide the stingray gigging is excellent out there if you are so inclined. Judging by the number of sharks we saw if you wanted to but out a shark line you might catch some in the 5-7 foot range. Our best fishing came on small pinfish we caught and the large dead shrimp but we also had some luck with a white grub. If you go out there on a falling tide beware! In my younger days I got caught on the shoal several times and walking your boat off is a pain.