Let me start by making a correction about something I put in last weeks column. I wrote that there were flounder caught up to 35 inches, it was suppose to be flounder to 3.5 lbs. Sorry for the error. I caught some flack over that one including a few phone calls. It’s good to see that the readers are there to keep me on my toes.
Jake at Flagler Beach Bait and Tackle repots that trout are being caught at the pier in the early morning hours and that flounder up to 6 lbs are still being. Black drum, whiting and bluefish round out the rest of the fish being landed. Jake also reports his other shop, Highbridge Bait and Tackle, has reports of lots of snook coming from the Highbridge area along with good catches of gator size trout. Jake took some time to fish last week and had snook of 30 and 27 inches. He used a shad tail on a bucktail jig to land the fish.
When the possibility of running offshore presents itself there are reports of cobia and king mackerel being caught. Cobia, which can usually be found this time of year in the 30 ft. depth range, are being found further out in the 65 ft. depth range. It could be due to the rough water we’ve been having lately.
Last week Kevin and Julie Tobin fished the ICW with me. The fishing started out a little slow but came on strong near the end of the trip. They caught jacks, a bunch of trout in the 17’ range and a couple of undersized snook. The fish were caught on live shrimp and plugs. Kevin lost a couple of larger trout that he hooked up on a bomber plug.
Here’s a little story for those of you that don’t think there are alligators in the ICW. I know there are gators there because I have seen many of them, especially in the southern part of the county. In my 16 yrs. of fishing here I have never witnessed what I saw a couple of weeks ago. I had a charter out and we were at the end of a canal that is about a ¼ of a mile long and began working are way back to the mouth of the canal under the power of the trolling motor. At the mouth of the canal we could see some thrashing going on but just figured it was a manatee flopping around. As we got closer I stated it looked like a gator but than it disappeared. Moving closer to the mouth we saw this arched object sticking out of the water that looked like the loch ness monster. Upon closer inspection we found it to be the tail of a gator but it was not moving. I got right next to it with the boat but it never moved. It was standing almost straight up and down so I couldn’t see the body but by the size of its tail I’d say it was between 13 to 15’ long. I took my push pole and poked it to see if it was alive and the gator swooshed its tail and went under the water only to have the tail surface again a few seconds later. This went on for a half hour than the gator disappeared under the surface. We hung around for about a half hour longer but it never surfaced again. The only conclusion that we could come to was that when we saw the flopping around that the gator had captured some kind of prey on the canals bank and dragged it into the deeper water to drown it. You might want to think twice before jumping into the water to cool off or walk the banks to cast net mullet.
Photo: Alan Skyles with a 5 ½ lb trout he caught while live lining a shrimp.
Jake at Flagler Beach Bait and Tackle repots that trout are being caught at the pier in the early morning hours and that flounder up to 6 lbs are still being. Black drum, whiting and bluefish round out the rest of the fish being landed. Jake also reports his other shop, Highbridge Bait and Tackle, has reports of lots of snook coming from the Highbridge area along with good catches of gator size trout. Jake took some time to fish last week and had snook of 30 and 27 inches. He used a shad tail on a bucktail jig to land the fish.
When the possibility of running offshore presents itself there are reports of cobia and king mackerel being caught. Cobia, which can usually be found this time of year in the 30 ft. depth range, are being found further out in the 65 ft. depth range. It could be due to the rough water we’ve been having lately.
Last week Kevin and Julie Tobin fished the ICW with me. The fishing started out a little slow but came on strong near the end of the trip. They caught jacks, a bunch of trout in the 17’ range and a couple of undersized snook. The fish were caught on live shrimp and plugs. Kevin lost a couple of larger trout that he hooked up on a bomber plug.
Here’s a little story for those of you that don’t think there are alligators in the ICW. I know there are gators there because I have seen many of them, especially in the southern part of the county. In my 16 yrs. of fishing here I have never witnessed what I saw a couple of weeks ago. I had a charter out and we were at the end of a canal that is about a ¼ of a mile long and began working are way back to the mouth of the canal under the power of the trolling motor. At the mouth of the canal we could see some thrashing going on but just figured it was a manatee flopping around. As we got closer I stated it looked like a gator but than it disappeared. Moving closer to the mouth we saw this arched object sticking out of the water that looked like the loch ness monster. Upon closer inspection we found it to be the tail of a gator but it was not moving. I got right next to it with the boat but it never moved. It was standing almost straight up and down so I couldn’t see the body but by the size of its tail I’d say it was between 13 to 15’ long. I took my push pole and poked it to see if it was alive and the gator swooshed its tail and went under the water only to have the tail surface again a few seconds later. This went on for a half hour than the gator disappeared under the surface. We hung around for about a half hour longer but it never surfaced again. The only conclusion that we could come to was that when we saw the flopping around that the gator had captured some kind of prey on the canals bank and dragged it into the deeper water to drown it. You might want to think twice before jumping into the water to cool off or walk the banks to cast net mullet.
Photo: Alan Skyles with a 5 ½ lb trout he caught while live lining a shrimp.