What is biting this time of year and where and what tactics

[Skunked again]

Hi everyone,

I am coming in from out of state (Maryland) the last week in January and wondering what species are biting this time of year and what tactics to use to catch them and where to go or at least what types of conditions I should try to find to catch the various species of fish that are running.

I am from the mid-Atlantic and did some commercial hook and line a few decades back. We specialized in casting jigs and bottom fishing for seatrout (the weakfish version) but also fished any other fish that were plentiful. Since then I fished on and off. I specialized in inlet jetty fishing for a while mostly catching rockfish (striped bass) and bluefish casting rebels and other plugs. In more recent years I have been fishing the surf. I like to bottom fish for the fish people catch and use them for bait for bigger fish. I use them as very fresh cut bait and swim the biggest of them as live bait. Surprisingly it usually takes less than 25 minutes for a 2 pound live bait to be sucked down. I set up my surf rods with 60lb braided line so I could fit as much as possible on the spool and have the strength of line to handle the biggest fish. Sometimes my wife would paddle my bait out with her surf kayak and drop the bait where I signaled her to drop it. Even with all the heavy tackle most fish spooled me and broke the line. I caught some nice sharks and some big cobia and big rockfish but most hookups on the live bait resulted in an eventual breaking of the 60lb braided line.

I have fished from Maryland to the Outer Banks but am totally unfamiliar with Florida's fishing seen. Any help to increase enjoyment of the 6 days (1/24-1/29/16) I will be in Riviera Beach/Palm Beach/Jupiter Inlet area would be appreciated.

I have booked a charter out of Jupiter Inlet for the first day but I have no concrete plans after that.

Thanks in advance

[HJared]

best bet would be juno pier.

You want NE wind with a front.

1oz Silver Gotcha plug on 3-6k rod with 20 or 30lb braid. Cast out far off the t, or to the north side, let it sink, and jig it as hard as you can, only reeling enough to get slack out of the line. This will land you bluefish, although smaller than you are used to fun on light tackle, spanish mackerel, jacks. Jigging straight up and down will even land some pompano. I use 40lb flouro leader usually, but you will get more bites lowering to 20, with the negative of cutoffs, if they are thick i use 6" of wire to 20 or 40lb leader to my mainline with a uni to uni, not swivel bs like i see some people try.

For pompano specifically, i use a very soft light rod with 20 or even 15 lb braid on a 3000 reel with 20lb flouro leader, and a goofy jig 3/4 oz pink with a chartruse teaser hook tied with a loop knot. You can catch pompano from anywhere on the pier. I cast out and let it hit bottom jig straight up 1x or 2x and let it hit bottom again and repeat. you will see other people doing this. all the local bait stores have these jigs. Juno bait is friendly and will show you knots and stuff, but i am sure they all will.

If you are bringing any of your surf rods, for pompano use a 12ft rod with 30ish braid although anything will really work and a 5-10k reel. I use a 3 hook pompano rig. Its dropper loop/chicken rig with a 5oz pyrmid weight on the bottom, 2/0 circle sea hooks with an orange bead before the hook. Best bait is sandfleas or cut pices of clam.

Topwater plugs and poppers and big spoons, and cutbait on the bottom will work for the jacks and bluefish at times as well, but my go to has been the gotchas lately. There could even be some cobia around but i wouldnt go there planning to catch one but people use the squid/octopus head 2oz orange and yellow cobia jigs to sight cast them.

The jacks also come around jupiter inlet. you can fish inshore around the bridges that connect to the ICW around there at night for snook using flairhawk jigs just reeling slowly and keeping them along the bottom.

After a big east wind you might do well with live shrimp right under the pier or close to it for snapper, but there havent been many that i have seen lately.

[gdm phil]

lmk if you wnna get off shore

[kblue]

I used to fish Chesapeake bay, Ocean City (MD) and Indian River Inlet (DE) to catch blue, striper, black, red, croakers, etc
In my experience as living 11 year in S Florida, fishing here is very different from North...

If I were you, I would visit the following place for each day for boatless fishing..

Sebastian Inlet (1 hour north from Jupiter)
http://www.sebastianinletdistrict.com/f ... ethod=list
Your best bet

Jupiter Inlet (go about 3 hour before low tide...) and Juno Pier

Lake Worth Pier

Boynton Inlet

DeerField Pier (Parking is a little challenge)

[Skunked again]

Thanks for all the great tips. Hopefully they will pay off.

I was down in mid November and did some touristy things with the wife the first 2 days. Then when I got around to fishing the wind was so high that the boats didn't go out for days. I had planned to do Charter and headbeat fishing but only got out once at night and was skunked. A few guys landed some fish but not many. Mostly the regulars at the back of the boat getting the preferential treatment from the crew. One guy hooked something big and played it for about a half hour before it broke him off. The mate said it wasn't acting like a shark so maybe a big grouper or something else big. Hopefully the weather will be more cooperative this trip. I am also planning on boatless fishing this time should the weather make the boating option not viable. I will pick up a fishing license and bring my travel rods. My uncle has a lot of fishing gear that needs to be overhauled, mostly lubing reels and fresh line. I am not banking on the boat trips this time but booked a charter for my first full day in Florida. Hopefully the weather won't get in the way this time. I will play it by ear after that.

[kblue]

I know that feeling that regulars on stern of the anchored party boat catching fish while you are skunked or catching grunt...
Avoid anchored and chum trip where those annoying stern locals doing flat line will have best chance to catch fish as their line goes with chum slick.....what you need is drifting trip where chance is equally distributed... Most early AM trip is drift and most night trip is anchor trip...
Good luck

[gdm phil]

if u are here on a weekend you can join us offshore

[Skunked again]

if u are here on a weekend you can join us offshore

Thanks for the offer but unfortunately to get really cheap air fair most of my trip is during the week. The one weekend day I will be there is when I have the charter booked. I assume if weather keeps the Captain in port you will likely follow suit.

I can remember at least two times during our hook and line commercial fishing days taking fresh acquaintances out to fish that were usually met at the dock or a nearby watering hole. It was always a worthwhile endeavor but something we did sparingly. The selective nature of such offers is probably why they worked out so well. The run to the fishing grounds was short so a trip back to the dock if necessary would not have been much of an inconvenience. If it was hot we might take the opportunity to have the fish market that we did business with shoot more ice into our coolers or sell what we had already caught and get fresh ice to go back out. They shot our coolers full of ice at no charge as that insured the freshest fish. Fortunately that run was only made when our boat was overloaded with fish. We always did well but worries of sinking the boat with our catch were very rare. The two of the three times I can think of were situations that either involved a long boat ride or trailering the boat to a different launch point to get to the fishing ground. That meant we weren't going to go back to the fish where the fish were running in the same day.

Thanks again for the generous offer.

Skunked Again

[kblue]

what did you catch? hook and line commercial? Do you mean long line?
I used to do commercial fishing too...We never took anyone out for fishing because it gets too dangerous...always something happens

[Skunked again]

what did you catch? hook and line commercial? Do you mean long line?
I used to do commercial fishing too...We never took anyone out for fishing because it gets too dangerous...always something happens

We specialized in Weakfish with rod and reel. They run in a 20 year cycle and at the time seatrout (weakfish) twice the normal size were running. We caught them up to 20 pounds and had a few much bigger that just wouldn't fit in the net. For some reason every 20 years the weakfish grow to these proportions. One of the old timers teaching me the ropes held the world record for a while with a seatrout around 25 pounds but after nobody caught one more than half that size for almost 2 decades they deleted the catch. Shortly after that the cycle was back and they were catching 20 pound class fish again for a year or so. Probably some ocean cycle. Anyway he knew the cycle was coming and was ready for it. I noticed that the first time a big female hit the surface she had a number of smaller bucks with her bumping her sides. We started trying to dip the females at first site as soon as we got them to the surface. If successful a quick enough dip would get some of the bucks that were bumping up against her as well. The bucks left her shortly after she hit the surface. Usually we got 1 or 2 bonus fish if we were fast enough but 3 was not all that common. The most we ever got was 6 bucks when quick netting a female. We also caught croaker when they ran and scattered striped bass as well as lots of big blues. Runs offshore were more for fun than profit. the gulf stream is a long long run and if the catch covered more than the boat costs you were lucky. One share went to each angler and one share went to the owner of the boat. But on offshore trips the expenses were paid first and then what was left was divided. Bait was more expensive etc. Out there catches were Dolphin, tuna and bluefish for the most part. The market for Bluefish dried up when a toxic spill in the James River Va killed the sale of bluefish. Ketone if memory serves. It was hard to even give them away.

We came to Florida every spring to do my grandmother's taxes. We boat a new boat and sold the least favorite of our 2 boats upon our return to Maryland after trying the new one. A big difference in boat prices in Florida versus Maryland at the time made this lucrative. Plus with advance research we had a boat to use in Florida soon after arriving. We had a 22' Robalo center console free drain fishing boat for a long time always opting to see the new purchase up in Maryland. We always bought similar center console free drain fishing boats like Mako, Aquasport, or Rabalo. While in Florida we focused on Grouper once we had purchased the new boat. We would dive down on the reefs and find the grouper and put up a marker and fish for them using the marker to know where to drop our lines. It was extremely effective and grouper paid so much more per pound than weakfish the money was great.

I did see something most people don't ever witness. We trailered down to Wachapregue inlet in Virginia's Eastern Shore because the flounder were supposed to be running. We didn't find any flounder but we were pulling in 4 pound class croaker about a fast as you could get a jig or bait rig down to them. No smaller croaker just 3.5 to 4.5 pound croaker. The challenge became not quickly hooking a big croaker. I was reeling my jig as fast as I could across the surface to see if I could catch something else only to hook up with another big croaker. Bottom rigs where bringing up as many croaker as they had hooks on every drop about as quick as they hit bottom. Tandem jigs were getting 2 on every cast. Then like someone flipped a switch there was not a bite. Nothing would get a hit. The change happened in a matter of seconds. I stopped fishing to take a look around to try to figure out why. It took a minute or 2 but I noticed what had occurred. The bloodworms were spawning. Every blood worm had come up from the muck and sand and were swimming freely in the water column from the surface all the way to the bottom. They were coming in and out of our free drain wholes into the water reservoir under the engine at the stern of the boat. They were everywhere. If you lure didn't look like a free swimming whole blood worm the fish totally ignored it. We had a pretty full boat before the bite ended and were quickly headed toward either calling it a day or having to through every fish we caught back. We tried a few other locations but no bites and called it a day. I guess the fish a gorged themselves on bloodworms and were sated for a while. We had hoped the spawn was localized to just outside the inlet but nothing hit further out in the ocean or in the sound.

[kblue]

While in Florida we focused on Grouper once we had purchased the new boat. We would dive down on the reefs and find the grouper and put up a marker and fish for them using the marker to know where to drop our lines. It was extremely effective and grouper paid so much more per pound than weakfish the money was great.

That is very interesting site fishing...lol

The bloodworms were spawning. Every blood worm had come up from the muck and sand and were swimming freely in the water column from the surface all the way to the bottom. They were coming in and out of our free drain wholes into the water reservoir under the engine at the stern of the boat.

That is so creepy...I know that ugly blood worm...inside thing comes out and opens mouth to bite...

[Kingofthesea]

That is so creepy...I know that ugly blood worm...inside thing comes out and opens mouth to bite...

KOREAN UNDERSTATEMENT

Creepy? Ugly? Listen my Blues Brother first of all the thing looks like an uncircumcised evil dik with an attitude . Then when you are putting it on the hook the dik head pops out and actually goes after your finger. and (here's the kicker) when the dik head pops out now its got four claws,,,,,,,.

HEBREW ADMISSION
I wait for the dik head to pop and I snip it off. Hey Rare......any idea why I always enjoyed cutting off the dik heads as a kid?

[kblue]

If you read the story carefully...creepy part is a possibility that bloodworms can come out of shower nozzle and bite your dik... I meant bloodworms circumcise yours one more time...lol

[Skunked again]

Well a blizzard in Baltimore at the time of my flight has me changing plans. If my wife can get off work I will be arriving January 29th and leaving February 4th. I guess that doesn't change things much but it does give me 2 weekend days. I am trying to rebook my charter but that leaves whatever other day was not used for other plans. He may already be booked so that might leave either January 30th or 31st.

[Skunked again]

Well rather than looking at the gulf stream from a Charter boat today I find myself looking out the window at 32 inches of snow. It is the most snow as long as they have kept weather records in this part of the state. I should be able to get dug out by the flight time on Friday. Crossing my fingers.

[gdm phil]

might head out sat offshore if your interested

[Skunked again]

might head out sat offshore if your interested

Well the charter plans are Saturday with Sunday as a bad weather day if Saturday is a no go. I am interested but it looks like there is a conflict. It would be sweet to be able to do both but I am not sure that can happen.