It’s been a great week to get out and fish all along the First Coast. The weather has been incredible and the bite is hot. Offshore or inshore this is always a good time of year to fish. It’s looking like the weekend ahead will be good conditions with mild winds and calm seas.
Sunrise high tides will have clean water in the creeks near the inlets and over the rocks making for good conditions to fish for Sheepshead and Trout. Back in the marshes on early mornings the higher tides are great for throwing topwater plugs or popping corks. Look for Redfish and Trout around areas with submerged oyster beds, especially flats that go dry or near dry on low tides. Grass lines are also good ambush points, the mullet and shrimp will move into the grasses as the water comes up. Flounder will stage on drains and Redfish will patrol the grass edges as the bait moves in and out while the tides ebb and flow.
Offshore the Mahi are coming through in waves and there are still some Wahoo and Blackfin Tuna around. We seemed to get a good patch of water holding Mahi last week but this week the bite was slower with mixed reports out of both Mayport and Vilano. You can expect the Mahi fishing to get more consistent as we move into May. There were a few boats that trolled the stream last weekend and found some Yellowfin tuna and Blue Marlin out of Vilano. The bottom fishing out deep was pretty consistent, not a wide open day but good mix of Vermilion, Mangrove, and Mutton Snapper plus Triggerfish and Jacks.
The Pompano are starting to show up along the beaches and the whiting bite has been consistent. The pogies are showing up off the beach and it’s been hit or miss at the poles, deep in the chum hole, and off Talbot. I saw a few schools of big Jack Crevalle in the deeper pods this week which make for a fun fight on whatever you throw at them. A big tuna popper is hard to beat, you can usually get them crashing the topwater and fighting each other for it. I like the Chug Norris with single hooks, it’s not fun wrangling a fish that size with a bunch of 4x trebles thrashing around.
Many of you that know me personally know that March and April I’m focused on one fishery in particular and that’s beach run Cobia. Staring around mid March and lasting through April there’s a seasonal migration of Manta Rays and Cobia along the Florida coast. As someone who loves to sight fish and fly fish I was addicted to beach Cobia fishing as soon as I had a skiff large enough to get out of the inlet. It’s a unique opportunity to present flies to a pelagic fish without chumming or blind casting a sinking line. It’s a grind, and if you’re willing to put the time in it can be incredibly rewarding when things all come together. As a great beach angler once told me, “Grinders get rewarded.”
The last few weeks there’s been a few Manta Rays popping up along the beaches but it’s been tough fishing this season. This week we covered about 70 miles of beach and fished a dozen or so scattered rays without seeing a single Cobia one day and only a couple shorts the next. To top it off a boat comes in right on top of us and pushes the ray with the fish down while we are casting on it. If you’re out fishing the beach give people working a ray space to fish, running up on them and casting on the same fish is not only poor etiquette but almost always just pushes the ray down anyway.
When you find a ray approach it slow, make long cast in front and inside of it so you don’t hook the ray or push it down. You don’t want any fish on it to eat right beside or above the ray. If your braid touches any part of that ray it’s game over, you’re out of a $20 jig and any fish you hooked. Ideally you want to pull the Cobia off the ray and hook it in open water. They will readily chase almost anything they see so it’s not that hard to do if the fish are cooperative.
A live bait or a jig will both work, with how short the windows are the jig has an advantage of being quick to cast but many fish are wise to our game and more likely to eat a live bait. Once you hook the fish it likely will try furiously to get back to the ray after so fish heavy drag and strong hooks. A 6k or 8k spinning reel paired with an 8ft rod is a good combination to go with for fishing the beach and can double as a Tarpon set up all summer.
The beach fishery is more pressured than ever before and it’s up to us as anglers and stewards to do our part in helping Cobia make a comeback. There’s a tagging program available that’s run by the University of Southern Mississippi that you can participate in by tagging the fish you catch locally. There’s hope that the regulation changes made recently will help restore our population but as someone who has spent a fair share of time Cobia fishing the last few years have been hard to be optimistic about the future of our fishery. Tagging fish this season has helped motivate me to keep looking on those long runs where you’re staring at miles of empty ocean for hours. If you want to participate or find out more information check out the links below.
As always wishing y’all tight lines, fair winds, and following seas going into the weekend! If you’re looking to book a charter, submit a photo, or have a report to share reach out to me directly at chris@fishjax.org or visit www.fishjaxcharters.com.
University of Southern Mississippi Cobia Research Project: https://www.usm.edu/fisheries-research-development/cobia-tag-release.php
Cobia Tag Request Form: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=vqQ9fyInLkO_p2QIDR6x3JoWbrr2QTdChGu6h-THzVtUM09KMzhLUDRVM0wxMEpZUTRFTkpMUlhJQS4u
Will and Bailey spent a windy day on the water with me last week and were rewarded with new personal best on Redfish.
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