Looking forward to Spring!

Man am I looking forward to Spring! 

The weather the last couple of months has been making fishing conditions tough and pretty undesirable. Not to mention, not many people want to go on a fishing trip when it’s raining and the wind is blowing 20 knots, or both! 

The inlet has gotten very slow for the most part and the water has been just about filthy, so I haven’t been fishing it much. Inside the inlet the water has been pretty dirty for a good little way too, so that part of the river has slowed down quite a bit too. 

There’s been a bunch of sandbar sharks that are 3-4’ which some of my clients have actually had a blast with. I’ve been fishing some 10-15’ deep areas and just using live shrimp. I’ve had some trips catching 5–10 sharks in a fairly short period of time, and we have even found some bonnet head sharks which my clients have brought back here and there. The sandbar sharks are protected, but you can keep 1 bonnet head per person and up to two sharks total per boat. 

Once you get further away from the inlet, the water starts getting cleaner and has been more productive. I’ve been finding a decent amount of flounder and redfish around oyster bars and live mud minnows have been a good bait. However, the water has also been extremely low so some areas I was doing well, I can’t even get to lately. I can float in about a foot of water but some areas I was just fishing recently are completely dry on low tide. 

Up in Ormond I’ve been seeing more life than anywhere else. Lots of bait from the Tomoka Basin all the way up to Flagler. I tend to fish up that way more this time of year. On calm mornings, just about every trip, we’re finding redfish pushing up in the shallows. There’s some good size fish, but I have been noticing a bunch of smaller rat reds. I’ve been liking fishing artificials up there and covering some territory. A white paddle tail on a 1/4-3/8 oz jig head has been one of my go-to baits. We’ve been catching redfish, snook, flounder, blues, and lady fish in that area. Now that we’re approaching Spring, hopefully we get some better conditions. We should start getting into some hot fishing in the near future. Tight lines and call me to set up a trip!