Wednesday, February 08, 2012



The new regulations for spotted sea trout and redfish are now in effect. The bag limit for trout is now six per person per day. The size limits remain the same at 15” to 20” and one of those fish can be over 20”. There is no more closed season on trout. The bag limit for redfish is now two per person per day with a maximum of 8 fish per vessel. In other words if you have 6 people on your vessel you are only allowed 8 redfish.
These new regulations are for the northeast and northwest sections of the state. The northeast section goes from the Volusia/Flagler county line north to the Georgia border. If you launch your boat at the Highbridge boat launch and fish in Flagler County you cannot bring back the northeast limits on fish back to Highbridge. You can only have the limits for the Southern region. If the FWC checks you at the ramp and you have the wrong limits you will be fined. If you have any questions about the new regulations you can go to “my fwc.com” for further information.
Snook season is also open now and the size limits on snook are 28” to 32” with a bag limit of 1 per day per person. You must have a snook stamp to possess snook.
Remember that when you measure fish that have a broad tail like that of redfish, trout or snook you have to squeeze the tail when measuring them. That’s the way the FWC wil measure them if you get checked.
I know the snook fishing hasn’t been good in our area since the Big Freeze of a couple of years ago but I’ve been seeing signs that the fishery is on the rebound. I’ve been getting rports of people catching lots of little ones in there cast nets. And since the water has been warming up I’ve started to catch small ones again using flies. There are also reports of some decent size snook coming from the Tamoka River.
The big redfish schools that were in the Pellicer flats seem to have dissipated with the onset of warmer water. You can still find reds just not in the big schools that were there a month ago.
Trout fishing remains steady but they also seem to be more spread out due to the warmer water.
There’s also been some good size flounder picked up in the flats using Berkley Gulp. I even caught a flounder while trolling a fly down a canal against the wind.
Access to the flats should be a little easier now that the northeast wind has pushed some water back into the area.