Three anglers were standing in neck-deep water off a beach on the Florida panhandle, being circled by a 12-foot shark—the kind of shark that makes its living attacking swordfish, tuna, and other sharks. It was the next-to-last moment in a beach-fishing adventure none of them will forget, and it ended safely for all of them, including the shark.

On November 12, Travis Lucas and friends Joshua Smith and Ben Brandner caught and released a very large shortfin mako shark from the beach. It’s exceedingly rare to catch a mako from shore; they prefer deep water and the larger prey that live there. This was the first confirmed shore-caught mako at Cape San Blas, about an hour east of Panama City. The shark was released per the rules; harvesting Atlantic mako sharks has been prohibited since 2022 due to overfishing.

Lucas, Smith, and Brandner never expected to catch a mako, let alone one that’s about as big as they get. “We usually just target big species, like bull sharks,” Lucas recalled. A week earlier, they had caught a 12-foot dusky shark and a 13-foot great hammerhead.

The Hometown Sharkers Score Big

The group, “Hometown Sharkers” on their social media, specialize in overnight beach outings.
Lucas was set up with an Okuma Makaira 130 reel spooled with 200-pound Reaction Tackle braid, a 300-pound mono top shot, and a homemade 800-pound leader on a 7-foot Rainshadow rod. The 24/0 circle hook was baited with a chunk of a blacktip shark caught earlier in the day.

Lucas had dropped the bait from a kayak about 1,000 yards offshore at sunset and paddled back to camp. During the evening, “we ended up catching a smaller bull shark on another rod,” he said. After that, it was a calm, cool night on a quiet beach—until it wasn’t.

“We had actually dozed off,” Lucas said. “I woke up to the 130 screaming.” He got into his harness and immediately knew the fish was heavy, perhaps a tiger shark. “It started pulling pretty significant drag pretty effortlessly,” he said.

Ten minutes in, the fish “woke up” and began leaping in the moonlight, “pretty much back-to-back for three or four minutes in one position, and then again in the next,” Lucas said. Eventually, the acrobatics ended. The fish ran toward shore a couple of times, which made life easier for Lucas, and the fight was over in 35 minutes.

As the fish neared the beach, the anglers still didn’t know what they had caught. Maybe a hammerhead, they thought. When it reached the wash, they thought it may have been a great white. When they finally got a light on it, “there was a lot of screaming,” Lucas recalled.

Team Release

“Releasing that fish was one of the most memorable situations I’ve had,” he said. “We realized it was a mako. Josh runs out with the tail rope. I come out with bolt cutters and the hook remover. We get out there, assess the situation, get it unhooked, get the leader off of it. It was about 49 degrees, it was cold.”

Lucas’s wife, Flower, and the other guys’ girlfriends watched and held flashlights from the beach. The group began moving the mako to deeper water to ease its release. “So it’s pitch black outside. We get out past the sandbar, so we know she can swim off. She swims out 10 or 15 feet and comes back at us. She made three full circles around us before thrashing at the surface and then swimming off. It was definitely nerve-wracking.”

The group saw for themselves why makos are sometimes confused with, blue sharks. “They are in every sense of the word ‘blue sharks’,” Lucas said. “When the light hits them they’ll go from deep purple to blue, and it’s a color you’d never expect to see from an animal. It almost seems like it’s a holographic. They’re pretty wild looking. It’s definitely a once in a lifetime fish.”

The post Massive Mako Caught on Florida Beach appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

You’ll find anglers on bridges and beaches, bait shops open long before dawn, big tackle stores that carry enough gear to outfit a fleet of sport-fishers, and a line-up of fishing tournaments year-round. Numbers tell the story, too.

Jacksonville has the highest rate, per capita, of fishing license holders of the four biggest Florida metropolitan areas. That beats Tampa-St. Pete, Orlando, and Miami-Fort Lauderdale. Jacksonville takes the crown for the hardest-fishing big city in Florida.

The region’s rivers, maze-like marshes, bays, the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), jetties, beaches, and offshore grounds form a network of waters unlike any other in Florida. Two spring scenarios to target are shallow-water redfish and trout, and offshore, schools of migrating dolphin swarming at the Ledge.

Catch Seatrout and Redfish in Jacksonville

Big tides breathe life into Jacksonville’s extensive marsh-and-creek system.

“We have a 5-foot tidal swing, on average, every 6 hours, so the locations to fish are constantly changing,” says Capt. Buzz Brannon, who’s guided anglers in Jacksonville for more than two decades.  He runs an 18-foot Beavertail Vengeance in the shallows, stalking reds, trout, flounder, and other species on spin and fly. One of his favorite bites is for “hillbilly bonefish,” what some folks call redfish when they get them in the grass on big tides, he says.

For seatrout, Brannon likes dusk and dawn, low-light times. In the spring, when the finger mullet show up, both trout and redfish take topwater lures. “Anything with a hard edge along the St. Johns will be holding mullet,” he says.

Fishing the city’s infrastructure — bridges, docks, seawalls, and industrial installations along the water (where legally accessible) — produces a variety of species. Both natural and manmade habitats hold good fish in Jacksonville, one of the city’s many surprises for visiting anglers.

It’s been the best year of redfishing Brannon has seen for quite some time. In 2012, an increase in the redfish bag limit to 2 fish per person took a toll on the redfish. In September 2022, the bag limit was lowered back to one redfish per person, and since then, the fishing has been steadily improving, Brannon says.

The nourishment of those rich waters flowing in the St. Johns generates and draws abundant life to the nearshore and offshore waters, including a pelagic fishery that’s been a standout hotspot in recent years— the Ledge.

Big Dolphin off Jacksonville

About 55 to 65 miles off Jacksonville, depending on the marina’s location, the continental shelf slopes down from 120-foot depths and then drops off to 175 feet deep — the Ledge. The Gulf Stream runs nearby, and when its warm waters or any of its warm eddies circulate over the Ledge’s structure, prey, and predators get drawn into those dynamic flows. In winter, these waters hold good numbers of big wahoo, ranging up to 70 and 100 pounds, often caught high-speed trolling and more recently, Capt. Tim Altman of Hoodoo Charters says, by live-baiting.

“Guys are having incredible days for wahoo at the Ledge slow-trolling live baits like blue runners and bonito,” says Altman, a multiple-time wahoo tournament winner and a fanatic for those fish.

Capt. Altman runs 11-hour charter trips to the Ledge for pelagics including wahoo and dolphin aboard his Saltwater Challenge, a 36-foot Contender with triple Mercurys. In April, the game switches to catching big dolphin.

“We’ve crushed it the last few years for big dolphin at the Ledge, lots of them,” he says. “We’ll start going out for them between April 12 and 15, and the biggest fish are early in the year. We get a good month and a half of solid dolphin fishing.”

His good news about dolphin fishing may surprise people who’ve heard about a lack of fish in recent years around South Florida and the Keys.

“I’m aware that South Florida has seen a real decline in their dolphin fishing, especially around Key West, Marathon, and Miami. I can’t explain the difference in Northeast and South Florida fishing,” Altman says. “The old-school guys say the migratory pattern for yellowfin tuna has changed, so maybe that’s the case with dolphin, too, or maybe the currents have changed.”

Dolphin at the Ledge

Altman and his crew leave his Amelia Island marina at 5 a.m. and head out to the Ledge for an 11-hour trip. He’ll check RipCharts on his phone and screenshot the image of the temperature breaks at the Ledge. On his Simrad he also has SirrusXM weather for sea surface temperature readings offshore. He’s looking for temperature breaks with ocean water temps 76 degrees and warmer, weed lines, and edges.

“During dolphin season, as we get near the Ledge, I’ll put out small Nomads or a horse ballyhoo skirted with an Ilander on a planer with wire to target wahoo. Beyond the Ledge, we’ll run everything on the surface.

“Some days skirted stuff works, but I don’t believe there’s anything more effective for dolphin than a properly rigged, chin-weighted, split-bill ballyhoo,” he says. “When you see that big dolphin coming, or if you get a hit, you free spool it for 15 to 25 seconds, and I’m telling you that works.”

The dolphin come through in packs, and between times Altman and crew can also bottom fish for triggers, snapper, grouper, or whatever’s in season. They’ll likely have sardines in the livewell and they’ll chum dolphin by their boat with cuttlefish or squid, keeping a lookout, ready to throw a live bait to any big fish coming to the boat.

“You’ve got to be ready for those big fish. You’ll have a bunch of schoolies, the boat’s kicked out of gear and you’re live-baiting. The fish get all around you. Then you’ll see the dolphin scatter and that’s indicative of a shark or a big dolphin coming in to tear them up. I’ll tell you it’s incredible when you see that big dolphin coming through the water to you. Man, that’s fun.”

Jacksonville Florida Fishing Captains

• Capt. Tim Altman, Hoodoo Charters, (904) 859-6314, www.hoodoocharters.com
• Capt. Buzz Brannon, Northeast Florida Angling, (904) 570-7878, www.northeastfloridaangling.com

Bait Stores

•             B & M Bait & Tackle, Jacksonville, (904) 249-3933
•             Brown’s Creek Bait & Tackle, Jacksonville, (904) 757-1600
•             FishBites Trading Post, St. Augustine, (904) 217-8012

Note: Special thanks to the FWC and its licensing department for the analysis of its data on fishing license holders by municipality across the entire state of Florida.

The post The Hardest-Fishing City in Florida appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

I watched a National Geographic documentary recently on the African savanna, highlighting the typical predator-prey encounters that the landscape is famous for. A wildebeest was at a watering hole and, predictably, its day was ruined by a pack of gnarly hyenas. I always felt sorry for the big beasts as they tried to fend off attacks from every quadrant. Sometimes the beasts get away, but many at least suffer wounds that eventually finish them off.

Which reminds me of the current state of Florida waterways, besieged by repeated thrashings from a pack of hyenas, in the form of ancient and inadequate sewer infrastructure, failing septic systems close to the water, heavy residential and corporate agriculture fertilizer runoff, stormwater runoff, freshwater herbicides and more. That’s a formidable, destructive pack of attackers.

And it’s all happening at once. The causes and consequences have been relatively ignored for years, and if these attacks do not stir panic in the hearts of Floridians who fish, boat, love the water, or care about their health — maybe they’re not paying attention.

The Real Culprit

Lack of political will and urgency — plus inadequate funding — is at the heart of the failures. It’s too easy to chalk it up to too many new residents coming in or too many tourists. The reality is Florida’s office-holders at every level, and the agencies they oversee, are stuck in a time warp. They seem to think you can still use 1950s technology and approaches that worked for a 1950s population, and somehow protect the resource that is suffering much greater pressure today.

Not to mention that development permitting is way too easy in the Sunshine State. If you fish in Florida, you’ve likely seen the bumper sticker that reads “Leaving Florida? Take a developer with you.” That attitude likely sprung from the over-development of the woods, freshwater springs, lakes and salt waters that long-time Floridians consider “True Florida.” And True Florida is rapidly disappearing.

Sewer, Septic and Stormwater Pollution

The Everglades water crisis — and efforts to restore the natural system — is the center of attention (even internationally) for good reason. But that’s just one part of the massive Florida water problem — local point-source pollution throughout Florida is worsening rapidly.

Florida’s sewage infrastructure is ancient (as old as 80 years) and simply inadequate in places, where development is off the chain and natural habitat loss is shocking. Aside from age, performance of sewers is inhibited by Florida’s heavy rain, and of course, tropical storms. The regular rainfall and common deluges basically guarantee major spills. Sewage lift stations without generators shut down. Untreated sewage backs up and overflows, usually through simple manhole covers. It all ends up in our favorite waterways where we swim, fish and boat. Many expect rising sea level to exacerbate this problem.

Heavy and repeated nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) loading from septic leeching and large-scale sewage system spills fuel the harmful algal blooms (HABs) that cloud both fresh and coastal salt waters, shutting out sunlight that is vital to seagrass health. And all of Florida’s marine fish and other organisms depend on seagrass, and to a lesser extent, oysters and other shellfish. Not to mention sky-rocketing fecal bacteria levels that make people ill, and often prompt no-contact health warnings on the water.

Perfect examples of nutrient hotspots on the Atlantic coast include the upper St. John’s River, the entire 156-mile-long Indian River Lagoon, the St. Lucie estuary, Lake Worth Lagoon, and Broward and Dade county’s heavily urbanized waterways. On the Gulf coast, the west central region accounted for over half of all spills from 2009 to 2020. Southwest Florida accounted for over 15 percent. In contrast, the Space Coast on the Atlantic side accounted for 25 percent of all sewage spills. Not surprisingly, the heaviest population density regions fared the worst.

Sewage spills get the most media attention, and are more shocking to see than the continuous polluting inflows of stormwater. Florida’s copious annual rainfall used to seep into the ground surface and into Florida’s “honeycomb” aquifer. Now, rooftops, streets, parking lots and other impervious, developed surfaces prevent much of this. There is instead a quick shunting of this rainfall, and the pollutants it picks up, directly into lakes, rivers and coastal bays, in most cases, without any degree of treatment.

Everglades Restoration Sputters Along

Long before Florida saw today’s rampant development and sprawl, early settlers envisioned making a “worthless swamp” a money-making landscape. They blindly drained the wetlands of South Florida which was ruinous for the natural water flow that once trickled over land and in the porous ground year-round from today’s Orlando region to Florida Bay in Everglades National Park. Three major roadblocks interrupted the natural flow of the River of Grass:

• 1) Herbert Hoover Dike (which today is essentially a hardened dam)
• 2 and 3) Alligator Alley and Tamiami Trail cross-state highways that intersect the southern Everglades

The highways greatly impede the wet season bounty of fresh water which naturally spilled over the southern rim of the Lake Okeechobee. In time, the lands were drained by canals to accommodate corporate agricultural operations, mainly sugar growing and some row crops which needed drier fields in summer and fall, and ample irrigation during winter drought.

In the 1950s, the agriculture industry grew with dairy farms, cattle ranches and citrus groves. Unfiltered and unmonitored, nutrient runoff from these farms caused eutrophication of Lake Okeechobee. Increased phosphorus levels fed cyanobacterial blooms, also known as blue-green algae, on Lake Okeechobee. The harmful blooms and sediments flowed unimpeded to outlet valves such as the St. Lucie River to the Atlantic and the Caloosahatchee River to the Gulf. Florida basically destroyed three estuaries, and the dependent coastal economies, to support an agriculture industry that belongs elsewhere. (Note: Florida sugar is subsidized.)

The big hope in 2000 was the signing of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) by the Clinton administration, a complex suite of 65 water projects designed to right the Everglades ship, to basically restore the natural hydrology of the vast wetland. It was to take 20 years, with costs shared by the federal government and the State of Florida.

CERP is in year 24 with less than 10 percent of the work completed. A vast reservoir and stormwater treatment area (STA) is finally under construction south of Lake Okeechobee. It will supposedly take 20 percent of the polluted water from Lake Okeechobee that currently trashes the coastal rivers. Its size was shrunk by over 70 percent during land-acquisition negotiations — the state of Florida failed to find enough willing landowners to sell for the project footprint. The water-holding area might be completed and operational by 2035 if there’s enough money allocated in each budget year.

Take Real Action

Too many Floridians are not especially enamored with the outdoors, and too many seasonal visitors seem to accept the declining natural resources because, well, at least it’s not snowing outside. All anglers and outdoorsmen should engage with those who are paid by state and federal taxes to fix this mess.

Too few realize they can speak their displeasure directly to Florida’s branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the state’s handful of water management districts (St. Johns, Southwest and South Florida), the governor, senators and representatives, county commissioners, mayors — all of them. You can even take part with public comment on those monthly water district meetings. Hate to say it, but anglers are too often missing from the discourse. Same goes for the recreational fishing tackle companies, boat-makers and tourism businesses who stand to lose their shirts if this continues.

Responsibility Starts at Home

In the case of point-source pollution, you can change a few things you might be doing at home. Do you fertilize your yard and landscape? Consider stopping altogether, or at the least, choose low-nutrient products. Slow release, too. And never apply fertilizer, herbicides and fungicides during the wet season. It all ends up in the storm drains and public waterways. Floridians are increasingly eliminating turf grass, replacing it with native ground covers and plants. It’s a great move to make.

Don’t blow turf grass clippings onto streets where they end up washing into storm with the next heavy rain. They decompose and add phosphorus to lakes and streams, plus cause algal blooms in summer.

If you live where there’s sewage infrastructure, and you still have a septic tank, consider hooking up to sewer. There are cost help programs in some municipalities and communities. Conversion to sewage is finally gaining traction. Be part of the solution. At the least, keep your septic system in good working order.

Speaking of flushing, please never dispose of outdated or extra pharmaceuticals that your doctor prescribed. Researchers are finding massive amounts of human drugs in our fish and other wildlife. Some of the compounds do enter the waterways through human urine, but flushing old pills can and should be stopped.

About the Author: Mike Conner is a lifelong Florida fisherman, specializing in fly and light tackle angling. He has worked as a guide in South Florida, as a staff editor at magazines such as Florida Sportsman and Shallow Water Angler, and as executive director of the Indian Riverkeeper.

The post How Florida’s Water Woes Affect Anglers appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

For decades, the cobia migration along the Florida Panhandle in the spring brought Chris Wagner, of Fort Walton Beach, the most incredible fishing of his life. “Up in the tower of our Hatteras, the wind at our backs, the sun in my eyes, spotting those fish, that’s what I loved,” he said. “When I saw one, it was like an electrical shock went through my body.”

Wagner, a retired HVAC contractor, had those spring days for more than 30 years. He started fishing for cobia in 1989, and he got his own boat in ’90. “All through the ‘90s we had double-digit sightings, days when we saw 60 to 70 fish,” Wagner told me recently. “From ’97 through the early 2000s we’d get 100-pounders, routinely.”

Tournaments grew big, big cash and big crowds. Wagner and his team took first place in many of them. Some they won repeatedly. Now it’s all gone. The cobia are not dependable. And the big tournaments stopped. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “Last year we went out a few times. Some days we didn’t even see a fish. We kept one cobia all season.”

Anglers started seeing a slowdown in cobia numbers about 10 years ago, in 2013 and ’14.

“To me,” Wagner says, “it boils down to one thing: overfishing. I’m as guilty as anybody, too. It’s not one person’s fault. I got to the point where I felt like whatever needs to be done to bring them back should be done. Regulations can help. I still wish that they would go for a Gulf-wide closure on cobia,” he says. “Any regulation changes have to be Gulf-wide.”

Cobia Regulations Reconsidered

“We first heard about a potential problem in 2016 or 2017,” says Emily Muehlstein, Public Information Officer for the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council. “Commenters from the Panhandle region of Florida and from Texas expressed concern about cobia’s decline. Simultaneously folks in Louisiana and South Florida indicated that the stock was doing fine.

“Then we received a surge in comments expressing concern for cobia starting in 2018 when we were working on Framework Amendment 7, which increased the Gulf cobia size limit to 36 inches fork length,” Muehlstein said.

In 2022, the Gulf Council reduced the annual catch limit for cobia of 4,500,000 pounds down to 2,600,000 for 2023—a sizeable reduction. The Council also reduced the bag and vessel limit to one cobia per person, two per vessel. The next Gulf-wide stock assessment is scheduled for 2025. In the interim, Muehlstein said, the Council has embarked on efforts to learn more from fishing communities about how the fisheries for cobia and other coastal migratory pelagics have changed in recent years in hopes of informing proactive management decisions.

Where Did the Cobia Go?

If the biggest cobia in the Gulf were fished out of the stock, the species would need time and protection to recover. Other factors, however, might also be at play. The Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 is sometimes cited, the suggestion being that its pollutants destroyed cobia’s spawn. Changing sea surface temperatures might also have a role.

Anglers like Wagner who observe their regional waters over decades point out another possible factor—cyclical shifts in migration patterns of pelagic and coastal pelagic species. Wagner, and other anglers on the Gulf and the Atlantic coasts, say that while Panhandle cobia have declined, catches along certain Atlantic coast locations have increased.

“In the last 5 to 10 years, they’ve actually crushed them up in North Carolina,” Wagner says. “We know that Gulf cobia go up the East Coast. Some of the fish that we’ve tagged along the Panhandle have shown up in the Chesapeake Bay.”

A Cobia Mystery

Read Hendon is Oceanic and Coastal Pelagics Branch Chief at the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center. For years, Hendon conducted tagging studies on cobia with Jim Franks at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory at the University of Southern Mississippi. Among other insights, their work suggested that there might be a more western route of seasonal migration for cobia in the Gulf and that some cobia overwintered around deep oil rigs in the north-central Gulf, but he has not seen studies that confirm a shift in migration patterns.

“Based on the most recent stock assessment and lack of any direct research into distributional shifts or changes in migratory patterns,” Hendon says, “the absence is more of a mystery from a scientific perspective at this time.”

Chris Wagner said the idea that they’re still in the Gulf has occurred to him. “If we found out that they were down deeper, out farther, and still going by the Panhandle, I could live with that. But if the cobia returned and I got to catch them with my grandkids, that would make me happy.”

The post What Happened to Florida’s Panhandle Cobia? appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Admittedly, Capt. Brandon Storin first considered it an annoyance, but he soon realized that he had dialed in a cool Florida Keys fishery that goes largely unnoticed.

“During the time when we catch bridge tarpon in spring, sometimes we’d run into some bycatch of cubera snapper,” Storin said. “I think they’re chummed up because of all the people tarpon fishing; there’s a lot of scent in the water. It’s mostly just the scent of the baits. Some people chum for tarpon (with cut bait), but I don’t because it brings too many unwanted species like nurse sharks.”

Considered the most brutal of the snapper clan, the hard-fighting cubera is a straight-up string stretcher. As Storin notes, these aren’t the giant spawners that anglers catch at night over deep-water reefs with legal-size lobster as bait, but the 15- to 20-pounders common at Keys bridges will still give you all the fight you want.

How to Target Cubera Snapper in the Florida Keys

If you’re game to actually target these cuberas near the bridges, Storin offers a few tips.

When: April-May is prime time, but the small to midsize cuberas hang around the bridges throughout much of the year. Colder weather will slow the bite when big winds muddy the water; during these conditions don’t waste your time.

Storin said he’s caught cuberas on incoming and outgoing water, but the fish seem most aggressive at the change of the tide. The fish can feed much easier during slower water compared to when the tide is screaming — ideal conditions are when that heavy bridge current slacks up and starts moving again.

“They’re definitely more nocturnal, so the night action is great, but also, the first and last hour of the day can be good,” Storin said. “If you’re fishing for them during the day, I’d bet that you wouldn’t run into many of them during the full moon.”

Where: Storin does most of his tarpon guiding around Islamorada’s Channel 2 and Channel 5 bridges, and the Long Key area. Most of Florida Keys’ major bridges will attract cuberas.

How: Based on his tarpon fishing thefts, Storin can attest that cubera snapper like a big deboned mullet on a fish-finder rig or pinfish drifted near pilings. If he’s targeting cubera specifically, Storin would fish a smaller deboned mullet or a live pinfish on the bottom.

“I’d definitely fish the baits close to the pilings and close to the bottom,” Storin said. “You’ll want to make an upcurrent presentation so the scent will come down to where the cuberas are.”

Tackle: A 7-foot medium-heavy spinning rod with a 6500 series reel carrying 65-pound braid will handle most bridge cuberas, along with the abundant mutton snapper. Storin uses 60-pound fluorocarbon leader for tarpon, but he’ll drop to 40 for the wary snapper.

Cubers Snapper Fishing Tips

Land-Based: For anglers perched on Keys fishing platforms like the popular pedestrian-friendly Channel 2 and Channel 5 structures, a chum bag and a jumbo live shrimp can make big things happen.

What to Expect: Storin says bait size will determine how long an angler should wait to set the hook. A hefty meal might require a little chomping, but these fish are super aggressive, so they’ll snatch up a smaller offering and try to yank the rod out of your hand.

“If you feel them picking it up and turning the bait in their mouth, give them a few seconds,” Storin said, “but once they get a good bite, they’ll run hard. If you feel them batting at it, open the bail open to let them get it. I use the Owner Mutu circle hooks, so once they get the bait, I just let them come tight. Then you just have to (tighten) the drag and handle that run.”

The post Florida Keys Bridge Monsters appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

New regulations for snook fishing in Florida, effective January 1, 2024, establish nine snook management zones around the state along with seasons and slot limits for each zone. The new zones, like those established by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) for redfish in 2022, allow for a more regionalized and responsive approach to managing snook fishing in Florida’s waters, FWC officials say.

“These regions and regulations are part of our holistic management approach for Florida’s most popular inshore fisheries,” said Emily Abellera, FWC’s Public Information Specialist. “Through this approach, seven metrics are used to evaluate the snook fishery by region, which adds a holistic perspective to management decisions and allows our fisheries managers to be more responsive to regional concerns.”

Those considerations for management of snook include fishing pressure, relative abundance, habitat, stakeholder feedback, spawning potential ratio, air temperature, and harmful algal blooms in local waters. Assessments of these factors will be registered in the annual review of the fishery, which is available for each zone on the FWC’s website.

These localized annual reviews contain vital information about snook in each management zone in a brief, condensed, and graphic format. If an angler wants to know more about a local region’s fishery — possibly their home waters — these reviews are a terrific place to learn. They’re also available for redfish.

The FWC’s approach reflects the increasingly important role of habitat quality in fisheries management in contrast to the overwhelming importance of population assessments that dominated management policy in past years.

“It’s good to see FWC is managing snook through specific regions,” said Giles Murphy, owner of Stuart Angler Bait and Tackle in Martin County. His local waters of the southern Indian River Lagoon are known to produce some of Florida’s biggest snook. “In our area, the seagrass is extremely vital in our ecosystem, and it’s been dying off for 20 years. Now it’s completely gone. The redfish and seatrout fishing has suffered because of it. The snook can adapt and live through it, but that might not last forever with development increasing faster every year,” Murphy said.

The new zones will provide geographic boundaries for any urgent regulation changes caused by local conditions. In 2018, snook and redfish were declared catch-and-release only along parts of the west coast due to red tide. Extreme cold weather has also caused emergency closures to snook seasons in parts of Florida in the past.

Years ago, Ron Taylor, the snook researcher who helped guide the FWC’s snook management for decades, told me that management aimed to produce consistent numbers of all size classes of snook including slot-sized fish for anglers to keep and over-slot, trophy fish that anglers can brag about.

“Those goals haven’t changed,” Abellera, of the FWC, assured me recently. “What’s new with the holistic regional management approach is that we are judging whether our regulations are meeting those goals using more metrics, and we’re evaluating our success on a smaller scale that better reflects the anglers’ experiences,” she said.

At this time, the main change to last year’s regulations in the new management zones affect two areas on the Gulf Coast.

“For the Charlotte Harbor and Southwest snook management regions, the summer closure now includes the month of September,” said Abellera. “This is one month longer than the other Gulf Coast management regions. Extending the summer season closure provides additional protection for snook during a portion of their spawning period that overlaps with the typical occurrence of red tide in these regions.”

Snook season opens Feb. 1 in the three east coast zones (Southeast, Indian River Lagoon and Northeast) and snook season opens March 1 in the rest of Florida’s zones. Slot and catch limits remain the same. The slot limit is currently 28 to 33 inches across the state, except for the three east coast zones that have a limit of 32 inches. Check the FWC website to see descriptions of the nine zones.

The post New Florida Snook Zones in Effect appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Three years ago, when my wife and I bought a condo a long baseball throw from the white sand of the Florida Panhandle, I knew as much about surf fishing as a grandmother from Appalachia. I had done it a few times in my fishing career, but always as a tag-along with others who had more experience. They did the hard work of finding areas that provided a good chance for success.

To the neophyte, the surf is the surf. It’s just endless miles of waves crashing on an indistinct shoreline, and the fish could be absolutely anywhere. Anglers with little or no experience might tote a rod to the water’s edge and walk the shoreline, making more casts than a desperate guy at a singles’ bar, just hoping for the best.

But my experience with other methods of fishing told me that wouldn’t be the most efficient technique. Ironically, what helped develop my strategy for effective surf-fishing was drift-fishing in water with the salt content of a glass of milk. Multiple times every year, whenever South Louisiana goes a couple weeks without any measurable rainfall, I tag along with Independence resident Joe Lavigne, 74, who skulls a thin-metal flat boat down a local river. 

A lifetime of experience has taught Lavigne where fish hold in moving water, and on every trip, he calls his shot multiple times, accurately predicting which casts will produce bites from pugnacious spotted bass. I may never be as skilled as him, but still, I’ve learned a lot in two decades of fishing with Lavigne. I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying fishy areas — where troughs are immediately adjacent to shallow water.

Figuring the same axiom had to hold true in the surf, I set out early in the morning after the first night at our new condo, intent on reading the water to determine where the anomalies existed. I imagined I’d return with a stringer of fish slung across my back, and hail my wife with a hearty “Good Morning,” just as she was taking her first sip of coffee.

But as Mike Tyson famously quipped, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. What socked me in the jaw that morning was the fact that, in the low light, I couldn’t tell where the bars were. An experienced surf angler could have probably seen subtle differences in how the waves were breaking, but to me, they looked entirely random.

So I just walked the beach making casts, and lucked into one undersized redfish. No one likes failure when fishing, but I absolutely despise it. It gnaws at me and lives at the forefront of my mind until I’m able to turn myself from a zero to a hero. Fortunately, I wouldn’t have to wait long for that to happen.

To me, the beach is just a cool place to stand while you’re fishing, but my wife would spend all day every day there if she could. So in the interest of marital harmony, I hauled some beach chairs and an umbrella to the sand under a high midday sun, intent to put the misery of my early morning failure behind me.

And that’s when I found what I had been looking for. The wind was light and blowing offshore, which allowed any sediment in the water to settle out, and the tide had fallen since my early morning venture. Combined with both those factors, the early afternoon sun pierced the veil between me and nirvana, illuminating a boomerang-shaped sandbar 200 yards east that kissed the edge of the beach. I walked over, and through my polarized lenses, could clearly see a deep trough adjacent to the bar.

I wanted to sprint back to the condo, grab my rod and spend the rest of the day fishing, but then I remembered that whole marital harmony thing, and besides, I figured the fishing would be better in the morning on the rising tide.

I made a note of the exact location of the bar, and then I returned the next morning.

Throwing a shrimp-colored soft-plastic paddle tail on a 1/4-ounce jighead, I caught a flounder on literally my first cast, and then proceeded to catch nine more. The season was closed in Florida, so stuffed flounder would not be one of the first meals at our new condo, but I couldn’t have cared less. The validation of figuring something out in a new fishing environment meant far more than any feast. 

Since then, I’ve used that exact strategy to have consistent success in the surf. Whenever we visit our condo, my first afternoon is spent walking the beach, searching for bars that have a perpendicular element, relative to the shoreline.

When I find them, I’m confident they will produce fish in the morning. In the fall, it’s flounder. In the winter, it’s redfish. In the spring, it’s speckled trout. And in the summer, it could be any of the above. I still wouldn’t consider myself a surf-fishing expert, but man, it’s been a fun journey trying to get to that level.

The post Find Fish in the Surf appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Forty knot southeast winds drove torrential rains into our faces, soaking us to the bone at 2 a.m. in the dark of night. Crazy Alberto Knie and I were working one of Florida’s inlet jetties, punching 1-ounce bucktails through the spitting snot, fully realizing nobody with any sense would be out on the jetty rocks targeting snook during the ungodly hour and conditions.

The casts barely made it past the rod tip, plunking only 20 feet from the rocks into white-capped froth. Once the slack line was reeled up, my bucktail only sat 10 feet from the jetty rocks. A quick twitch, a little lift of the rod, and the magic happened — every time. In a three-hour span, Crazy Alberto and I landed 17 snook, all between 8 to 36 pounds, one cast after another. 

Was this just a lucky night? Or are there serious snook secrets to be learned about Florida’s inlet jetty rocks?

 Florida East Coast Jetty Fishing

Captain Ed Zyak’s snook playground is the St. Lucie Inlet jetty rocks.

“The prime run of big snook at St. Lucie Inlet is during the spawn, mainly from June through August, but really stretching from May to September, though you can find fish as early as February,” said Zyak. “They are moving through the inlet during the spawn, and that’s when you can really play catch and release with the spawning fish in the 20- to 40-pound class.”

St. Lucie Inlet’s north jetty rocks are jumbled puzzle pieces, many of which have crumbled down into the inlet channel and along the oceanside waters to provide new underwater structure.

“I tend to fish the incoming tides on the outside of the jetties on the oceanside,” he says, “but on outgoing tides, as the water turns and dumps out, they lay more on the inside notches inside the corners of the jetty rocks.” 

Zyak will cast artificial baits off the rocks such as 3-inch soft plastics, fixed on a ½-ounce jighead which he says resembles a sand perch or croaker.

“When there is a lot of boat traffic at the mouth of the inlet rocks, that’s when I go to artificials, as those snook are hunkered down deeper. Cast toward the rock, drift with the tide and give it quick snaps, such as 1-foot hops off the bottom,” says Zyak. “Pressured fish will tend to go for smaller baits like a 4-inch shrimp too. You want to be bombing the bottom with the baits. Sling the bait up-tide, and give it an aggressive hop with slow, sharp twitches.” 

Fishing Jetty Rocks for Snook

Captain Glyn Austin, of Going Coastal Charters, works Florida’s Sebastian Inlet rocks for his snook success.

“I’ll work the outer jetties via boat July through October, casting bucktails, Rapala X Raps or subsurface baits toward the tip of the north jetty on the outgoing tide,” says Austin. “During the summer months, snook will spread out along the beach as they hang around the pier north tip feeding on glass minnows as they spill out with the tide.”

Austin notes the average size of summer snook run in the 28- to 35-inch range, with larger model fish pushing the 40-inch plus mark. Snook will feed aggressively when water temps are anywhere from the low 70s to high 80s. It can be a year-round bite.

“If winter waters never get below 70, we can have snook along the jetty rocks all winter long.” Austin will also opt to go on the troll when the conditions are right. “I’ll drag lipped Rapalas around the tip of the north jetty and along the oceanfront to find snook lying close to the rocks.” 

Livebait fishing for Snook at Jetties

“Live bait really works best when there is minimal boat traffic and less pressure,” says Zyak. “When drifting the inlet with live bait, I like to get up high on the boat to get a visual of the snook — you can see their shadows lying on the bottom behind rocks and off the jetty.”

Don’t be afraid to check the dock or bridge pilings right inside inlet areas, not far from the rocks. When fishing around docks, or when the water is dirty in the inlet, try using side scan imaging to locate snook.

For live baiting, Zyak usually goes with threadfin herring, pilchards or live croakers, but notes croakers are best as they seem to be genetically programmed to swim straight to the bottom. Zyak’s drift rig consists of 30-pound braid main line to a 48-inch section of 50-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon, then a loop knot to size 4/0 or 6/0 Eagle Claw Trokar hooks. Zyak hooks the bait right under the bridge of the nose or underneath the belly just in front of the tail. He freelines the bait without any weight.

“Usually we are fishing 6 to 12 feet of water, and the bait swims straight down.” Average size snook are 10 to 25 pounds at St. Lucie Inlet, with Zyak recommending you concentrate your efforts around the approaching new moon for best results.

“I will also look for structure around inlet areas,” adds Zyak. “Those fish will come off the inlet rocks and explore the immediate area. When I find a nice piece of structure like a fallen tree or submerged rocks, I spot-lock the boat with my trolling motor and pitch baits back to it.”

Drift Fishing Inlets for Snook

Captain Austin also likes to drift live baits inside the inlet waters when the conditions are right.

“Snook stacked up along the bridge fenders and outgoing tides are best to fish with live bait,” says Austin. Live pinfish or pigfish are his preferred baits, with the rig consisting of 30-pound-braid running line, a surgeon knot tied to a 24- to 36-inch section of 40- to 50-pound fluorocarbon leader, and then a size 5/0 to 6/0 VMC circle hook to finish it off.  He will pinch a ½- to 1-ounce split shot about a foot above the bait to get it down into the zone.

“Sebastian has about 12- to 15-foot depths in the middle of the channel, so I will motor up about 2/3 of the way back into the inlet, up to the bridge, then make the drift,” he says. “The bottom structure is very sticky inside the inlet with plenty of rock hang ups, but the key is to drift into the holes between rock boulders.”

Find the right balance between bouncing over the rocks while still letting the bait near the bottom without snagging. Though morning and afternoon hours are prime times, Austin suggests not to overlook drifting live baits during the night hours.

“Those nighttime shifts are also real solid for guys fishing around the south jetty, with both live baits and bucktails,” he says. “You’d be surprised how hot that action can get in the middle of the night.”

My magical night casting bucktails on the rocks opened up a whole new world of snook fishing for me. Mangroves, fallen trees and docks are notorious snook haunts, but next time you’re milling around any inlet jetties that line Florida’s East and Gulf coasts, start thinking about rockin’ some snook.

The post Conquering Florida’s Jetty Snook appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Some anglers plan their trips to Florida a year in advance, booking top-dollar charters or well-know
guides during choice tides. The preparation practically guarantees their success. Others, visiting family on a last-minute whim, toss a travel rod in with their other bags and hope for the best. That was me.

I spotted it from the balcony of my snowbird parents’ fourth-floor condo: a wadeable five-acre tidal flat — a mosaic of swaying seagrass and sandy shell bottom — bordered by a meandering channel. Somehow it had escaped the developers and subsequent draining, bulkheading, and paving that dominates so much of southwestern Florida. When I pointed the flat out to my octogenarian mom and dad, they nodded, smiled, and turned up Tony Bennett crooning to “The Good Life.”

Later that afternoon, spinning rod in hand, I walked past the pickleball courts, clubhouse, and heated pool, then made my way down a bend in a winding, manicured path of crushed shells. There, I found a gap in the mangroves that led directly into the Gulf. I hid my shoes at the edge of a close-cropped lawn and stepped in barefoot. Sand squished between toes, and warm saltwater lapped my knees.

The mangroves gave way to knee-deep flats. I began working a topwater, its rhythmic “chik-chik-chik” carrying across the water’s surface. With each cast, the gated development and assorted amenities faded behind me. The tourism board calls the region between Tarpon Springs and Naples the “Sun Coast,” claiming it gets more sunny days than any other region in the state. Apparently, the sales pitch worked.

On my Uber from the airport, an endless clutter of strip malls, chain restaurants, and traffic marched to the horizon. But look closely, and you can find vestiges of old Florida. White ibis still probe for insects, but now along the shoulders of highways. Osprey chirp over the drone of leaf blowers. Patches of mangroves — illegal to cut down in Florida — lower their spider-like roots, attempting to reclaim land.

A wake appeared behind my Spook. I tensed and kept reeling. Then: chik-chik-chik-swoosh. The lure cratered and the line came tight. A redfish slapped its tail in two feet of water, then bored away in second gear before eventually surrendering to a lip grabber. Four pounds. Solid slot fish. A quick text to my parents confirmed: “Yes, bring home for dinner!” I tethered the locked grabber to a submerged mangrove root with the redfish attached.

The late afternoon took over as more of the flat revealed itself. A frisbee-sized stingray approached my legs then bolted off with exaggerated wing flaps. Farther out, a pelican crash-landed pouch-first into the Gulf, then looked around as if hoping no one saw it. A mullet leapt up and bellyflopped just because it could.

I fished my bait with purpose and hope. With a keeper red already in the larder, anything else would be welcome but unnecessary. Something crashed the Spook, tore off 30 feet of line, then cleared the water. The hooks held, so it jumped again. Nice snook. The fish ran a second time, heading for a patch of emergent spartina grass. We both wrestled for a few moments before the fish yielded. Then it was a matter of steering it within reach, dodging the hooks, and lipping it. The linesider was not huge — maybe 26 inches — but it couldn’t have given me much more. After I eased my grip during the release, it ghosted toward a depression in the flat and vanished.

Maybe an hour of daylight remained with probably more fish around, but I knew my parents were sitting on the balcony waiting for the sun to set — and their son to return with a redfish. I waded to shore, put on my shoes, and headed back up the path. A group in Building 3 enjoying their cocktails asked from their balcony in a distinctly New York accent: “Hey! What kinda fish is that?” When I told them, they seemed astonished such a wild creature could live so close by.

The post Fishing on Foot: Gated Florida appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Spotted seatrout. Speckled trout. Specks. No matter the name, this inshore species is one of the most popular game fish on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. The IGFA all-tackle world record, caught on May 11, 1995, by Craig Carson at Fort Pierce, Florida, weighed a massive 17 pounds, 7 ounces. Behemoths like that are rare, but many light-tackle anglers dream of catching a true trophy pushing double-digits sometime during their lifetime. So we asked three experts to tell us what they do and look for when targeting that specific bucket list prize.

Catching Gator Florida Seatrout

“Growing up fishing the Indian River Lagoon, I got pretty spoiled. It wasn’t unusual to catch a dozen fish over 10 pounds every season,” says Capt. Ed Zyak. “This is where the world record was caught. There are still big fish left, just not in the numbers as before. It really depends on where you are, though. On Florida’s southwest coast, a 7-pounder is a really good fish. But I still get really excited breaking that 10-pound mark.”

Zyak looks for out of the way places near Ft. Pierce that don’t get a lot of traffic, preferably on a new moon. Small shallow spots adjacent to deeper water, like the backside of a bar, are the focus of his attention. He prefers to get out of the boat to wade on the last of the falling and first of the incoming tides, which concentrates the bait. Zyak watches for telltale signs like minnows stacked up, the presence of big mullet, birds feeding and water funneling through the zone.

“Figuring out water flow is important,” Zyak says. “I’ll often kick up a little sand to gauge the current. You have to adjust the presentation according to the conditions, but typically I’ll cast a jerk bait or shrimp up-tide and let it sweep parallel to the bait, using a twitch-and-short-pause retrieve. The strikes usually come on the pause. I’ll stand still and pick a spot apart for an hour. The seatrout settle down and forget you’re even there, especially with long casts. That requires confidence and patience. You’re not trying to catch 30 fish, you’re looking for one or two chances at a trophy and that means a slow, methodical approach.”

Florida Seatrout Fishing Gear

Here’s what Capt. Ed Zyak, of Florida’s Indian River Lagoon, recommends:

• Favorite Months: April & May
• Rods: 7.5’ Medium spin rod with extra fast action
• Reels: 4000 class spin
• Line: 10-pound braided line, 30- to 40-pound test fluorocarbon leader
• Lures: 3-inch shad or paddles tails; 1/4-ounce artificial shrimp; Shimano Coltsniper topwater plugs
• Bait: Live pilchards
• Tip: “Patience and silence are the keys. Slow down, pay attention to the conditions and pick a spot apart.”

Giant Gulf Coast Spotted Seatrout

“I didn’t actually weigh any of my three biggest fish,” explains Capt. Richard Rutland. “I measured and released them as quickly as possible. If it takes two hands to pick one up, that’s a big seatrout for the central Gulf. They’re usually pushing 30 inches and up to nine pounds.”

Rutland often finds big cooperative fish in early December. He targets the tidal rivers off Mobile Bay where the deeper channels offer sanctuary from the cold. As the sun warms the adjacent flats, the trout will come up to warm and feed in the shallows. In deeper water he cranks the reel slowly and steadily with an occasional twitch to add action to the lure.

April and May are the big spawning months and Rutland prefers to fish right before or after the full moon when large females are active. His three warm-water zones are grass flats, oyster bars/shells and sand bars along the beach.

“I’m always wading whenever I can,” he says. “It’s much quieter and stealthy, so you have a better chance. I’m also more aggressive with my presentation when it’s warm. I’ll whack, whack the lure, let it flutter and then repeat at a faster pace to trigger reactionary strikes.”

Rutland says the weaker tides aren’t as much a factor in his region, as long as the fish have enough water to feel comfortable. If he’s in the boat with clients, he aligns with the wind and current to drift and reach prime zones with long casts.

Rutland’s go-to lure is a soft-plastic jerk bait made by PureFlats. The Slick has a long tail rigged with an Owner swimbait hook plain or slightly weighed. Natural colors top the list, but he will switch to brighter patterns for contrast in cloudy water. For live bait, it’s croakers, finger mullet or small menhaden free-lined on a 2/0 kahle hook.

“You have to be very, very patient to target big fish,” he adds. “You might only get four or five bites all day long. Catching one is a waiting game.”

Gulf Coast Seatrout Fishing Gear

Capt. Richard Rutland, of Dauphin Island and Mobile Bay, Alabama, recommends:

• Favorite Months: Second week of December, April & May
• Rods: 7.5’ baitcaster with soft tip and action
• Reels: 3000 class baitcasting reel
• Line: 30-pound braided line with 15- to 20-pound fluorocarbon leader
• Lures: Pure Flats The Slick jerk bait with Owner 4/0 Beast worm hook
• Bait: Live croaker, finger mullet
• Tip: “It’s always about distance and not alerting the fish. I try to cast as far as I can to cover more water and discern feeding patterns.”

Trophy Texas Seatrout Fishing

“Laguna Madre and Baffin Bay are hyper-saline systems that grow huge fish,” says Capt. Joe Farah. “But those fish are also very aware of their surroundings, so any boat noise or pressure wave puts them on alert. So whether you’re wading or drifting you have to stalk quietly and not give away your presence.”

Farah keys in on specific types of habitat when targeting large trout. He concentrates on small areas, usually 300 yards in size or less, quick access to deep water for escape, mud and sand, seagrasses and shell.

“I always watch for baitfish and birds. Terns, laughing gulls and heron will be after finger mullet. Pelicans will focus on shad, while sand pipers are looking for clams and eels. Find all those and you’ve got a big trout buffet.”

Farah prefers to cast into the wind, since resting trout will be facing the wind and current. That approach keeps him in the fish’s blind spot and brings the lure into their vision, where they can assess and kill the prey.

In February and March he typically throws a 5.5 jerk bait with 1/16-oz. jig head in tequila sunrise, dark black and red for fish warming in the shallow grass. In November, as the water starts to cool, there’s a late spawn and he switches to a rainbow trout-colored swim bait with 1/8-oz. jig to mimic the shad. He adds large topwater plugs to the mix in the spring and fall.

“You have to make every cast count. That’s why I use plugs in bright colors to track and detect any swipes or blow-ups. But I work them extremely slow, with short pauses to let them sit and roll in the waves to mimic an injured, dying bait. It often takes three minutes to retrieve a lure. The idea is putting a victim in the hunting zone. A trophy trout is extremely smart and wary. If something doesn’t look right, Old Google Eyes is going to say, ‘Nope, not this one.’”

Texas Seatrout Fishing Gear

Capt. Joe Farah, of Baffin Bay and Laguna Madre, Texas, recommends:

• Favorite Months: February, April, May, November
• Rods: 7’ medium fast spin
• Reels: 3000 class spin
• Line: 15-pound braid with 30-pound-test monofilament leaders for stretch
• Lures: MirrOlures or Heddons in bright colors for visibility; 4-inch swim bait in rainbow trout, jerk shads in natural colors with 1/16- to 3/8-oz. short shank jigheads
• Bait: Live shrimp under popping cork in the spring, summer months live croaker and piggy perch
• Tip: “Trophy trout fishing is like hunting. You don’t catch big ones catching numbers. You have to concentrate on spots that only hold big fish.”

The post Get Stealthy to Catch Giant Seatrout appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.