St Augustine Fishing Report by Ronnie Tumlin
Always reliable, never exagerated. Live weather at the bottom of this page too. At the bottom bottom is Dr. Steve Beckett's "whopper" caught a short time ago....no, make that a long time ago, been over six months now. I don't have a decent picture to replace it with, besides my programmer wants alot of money to change it so I have been putting some of our fish pictures on the flash selection on our home page...take a look.
3/10/10 Ronnie is still too busy selling property right now to go fishin but my buddies all say this warm spell in the 70s has turned on the fish big time. A bunch of locals pulled a sein infront of the house yesterday morning at daylight and caught a nice couple of baskets full of whiting off the beach. Albert says the flounder have turned on too in the creeks and trout are doing good and the sheep head jerkers say they are still doing good round the jetties at the inlet. Offshore has been "fair" at best. Pier fisherman have been doing better since it warmed up too. I'm going sheeps head fishin in a couple of weeks when they spawn over on the west coast will let you know about that on the next moon.
3/2/2010 Been too busy to go fishin but Chappy McBride tells me he was catching lots of trout, reds and flounder till this full moon. Even the rain hadn't slowed them down. Said he was killing them from the old fort north to Ponte Vedra in the flats I have my own theory, I think with a full moon the fish feed all night cause they can see better and are lazy during the day. Why else would fishing be lousy on full moon? Except for bream fishin and specs in fresh water and those don't count. I lost my cane pole years ago.
2/5/2010 The answer is still no. I hate fishing in January and everybody who fishes. Maybe Feb? They closed trout fishing so that's out. Beach fishing was good a couple of weeks ago but I ain't puttin my toes in that cold water. Somebody else give me a fishing report and I'll write it. RT
1/24/2010 No, I haven't been fishing, too busy selling properties at the beach and in town. Gotta make some money to be able to affrod bait. But I have been talking to some guys who haven't got anything to do but fish. One guy fishing the beach says he's been killing the whiting in the surf on Crescent Beach averaging 1.5 pounds that is a huge whiting...best eating on the beach. Another guy says he's been killing the big flounder and trout at the inlet on dead low tides with live fingerling. One more guy says the drum bite is still hanging on and the pier guys at St Aug Beach are still doing good when the temperature is over 70 which is average of this time of year and it is today. RT
1/12/2010...No! I haven't been fishin or golfin or workin in the yard. Too damned cold. Still.
12/7/09....Back on the skunk...went twice in the past two weeks got skunked, Gators lost in Atlanta and the damned Christmas lights I got at Walmart shorted out first time it rained. I oughta write a Jimmy Hatlo cartoon. If you're not old enough to know who Jimmy was, go Google him. It oughta be against the law to let chinamen make Christmas lights and sell'em in the U.S. Does anybody know where somebody could buy light strings for outside that are made in America? I have looked at half a dozen stores....just like fishin....got skunked. Somebody tell me. And here's my new year's resolution starting today the 7th of December, ain't buying no ornaments made in China...if the sticker doesn't say where it came from, no sale. December 7th...today's generation has no idea what today is....sad huh? And, how long will it take before kids have no idea what 9/11 means? Unfortunately, I suspect it won't take long at the rate we are going. Think I'll just keep pouting about the Gators losing and go fishin in a day or two.
11/26/09...Off the snide! Finally caught some nice fish in the ICW...even got a flounder at least 5 lbs and over an inch thick! Got a whiting on an artificial bait that went 2 lbs...thought it was a red till we got'em in the boat. Water is starting to clear up finally. Not alot of guys fishing right now, they all went deer huntin finally!
11/17/09 Got skunked again! Water still dirty, tides still too high. I did catch a nice selection of trash fish though, a sailcat, a 5 inch croaker, a blue and a lady fish. I guess I'm just a garbage man afterall. I talked to a guy at the ramp with a big fancy boat and 900 dollar reels, castnet, bucket, wading boots, Cabela's shirt the works....he caught one trout...he swore it was a keeper but it looked like the smallest keeper I ever saw if it was a keeper.
11/10/09 Okay so Bill got us all stoked up and we took the cover off the boat and gave it a try Saturay morning. We should have gone kite flying instead. After 2 hours of fishing the major we lost two rubber tail tips off two jigs and that was it. Moon still too full, too much wind, tide all backed up too high, water dirty and the fish had lockjaw. Should have been here yesterday right? Now there's a hurricane to stir things up over in the Gulf....might as well go to a football game.
11/4/2009 Bill Schlosser who owns a unit at Tradewinds reports today he has been "killing the whiting" in the surf, he caught two giant redfish, caught a few blues and even a sea turtle...now how that happened I have no idea. He sent me pictures too. Bill must be fishin with steel cable to haul in those reds much less drag a turtle ashore. I am sure the turtle was returned to the surf but it appears the reds went straight to the frying pan. This guy lives way up north and came down for a few days and was fishing right off the beach at Tradewinds and that is rather spectacular for a local not to speak of an Ohioan. Congratulations Bill, I suppose you were using african fiddlers for bait? That actually is the stock answer an old fishin buddy of mine used to use when people would come up and say man, what a nice bunch of fish you guys have there...what'd you use for bait? Sam would always say: "African Fiddlers!" We would laugh knowing they would head straight for a bait shop and ask for same.
10/15/09 Unbelievable fishing right now. Reds everywhere, surf, weeds, oysters you name it. Trout everywhere, Steve Steinmetz told he caught 40 off his dock last Saturay night wathcing the Fla game on TV. Do you think he would bring me one? He said there's a limit of 5 per person....yeah right. I had two different people tell me they are catching huge Jewfish at the Matanzas bridge. I haven't seen one caught in over 40 years there they used to be everywhere. The protected status of Jewfish has been too big a success. These strong arm bandits are stealing fish stringers, fish on lines, taking poles off the bridge the works. Ricky told me his neighbor was catching grouper off his dock in the intracoastal...caught one 25 inches last week! Now that is truly unbelievable. Ricky saw the fish said it was a gag grouper...he told the neighbor hey man, there's a limit on those things...the guy said not on "river grouper".....he said the man was serious. We used to catch grouper off the old wooden Crescent Beach drawbridge when I was a kid in the 50s but that's the first I've heard of such in over 50 years. Silver mullet are in the surf, guys with cast nets are catching them by the laundry basket full. That's what they keep in the back of their pick ups to put the mullet in.
9/1/09 No, haven't been fishing. Wind was blowing or it was raining. Friends tell me a few big trout are biting and my buddy Gator John said he was in a bar last week and some guy wobbled in and flopped down at the bar beside him and started telling a tale about catching thirty something huge redfish against an oyster bar at Crescent Beach. Had the time of his life and he was all by himself. The guy said when he gave out from pulling the big boys in, he tried to run his boat and the steering cable broke, so he got out the trolling motor to try and get back to the ramp, it was getting dark. He drained all his batteries then had to paddle then pull his boat by foot power the last half mile. That story is so bad it has to be true. He gave us the marker number and location of the oyster bed where he caught the fish but we haven't tried it yet. One for sure, nobody saw him do it so they still might be there. Stay tuned. Albert told me he caught a 22 inch trout on a finger mullet against the grass beds Monday, now that friends is good news.
8/9/09 Went to the Florida Keys last week of July to catch some lobsters and yellowtails. Did good on both. Did good catching some storms too. Had a lightning bolt hit the water less than 100 yards from the boat as we were running from a storm that came out of nowhere. Dusty and Suzanne both got a pretty good electrical jolt. They were both hanging on to metal railings. Me? I was hunkered down under the console. I wanted to go back and start dipping up stunned fish but the crew insisted we keep running towards the hill. No injuries, no scrapes or bruises. We got boarded three times by the water cops. One guy said us old farts caught more lobsters than most anybody they checked. I told them, of course we did....the outlaws know exactly where you guys are just like we do, they went the other way we have nothing to hide. I can tell you this, the annual pilgramage to the Keys was about 50% off best I could tell. We could walk in any restaurant and get seated immediately, got air without having to wait, got gas without having to wait, even the ice machines had plenty of ice and the bait shops had plenty of bait...that is the ones still open. Half are closed from last year. Even the Marathon Ice House was closed. Tough times do not discriminate. Hard evidence that people who have money and can afford to play, aren't doing it as much.... and the people with money who are getting out of the game are hurting the little people who depend on them for a living. That friends is true trickle down effect.
7/15/09 got some reports from my barber the mangrove snapper were biting at Matanzas inlet so, John, Dusty and I went out this morning to give them a try. Here's what we caught: two catfish, a ladyfish, a jack, a bluefish, a miniature red grouper, an even smaller rock bass, a flounder the size of a paper plate. Not one damned fish we could eat and nary a mangrove snapper. Other boats we passed by said they got skunked too. I think it must be the dog days are starting to get into full swing, come to think of it I think the mocking birds quit singing the last couple of days and everybody knows when the mocking birds quit singing dog days are here and the fish don't bite. Grandma said that's what the almanac said way back so it must be true.
7/7/09 Scallop season was a rousing success on the gulf coast I don't know what Jim was smokin-now get this. On the way back to the condo at Suwannee, we stopped and threw some artificial baits at an oyster bar. Suzanne thought she snagged the bottom in the 18 inch water until the bottom started swimming off. 15 minutes later and a bunch of squeels later she landed a 32 inch snook! Friends, that is a whopper by any stretch on 10 pound tackle and a trout rig. Unfortunately snook season is closed. I think I'll send the picture to our website guy and get him to put it down below in a few days.
7/1/09 Scallop season opens today, Jim Kimrey tells me "there ain't no scallops this year"....I'm hard headed, gonna go look for myself between Horseshoe and Steinhatchee this weekend. think we'll try to catch a grouper too before those are outlawed to where only outlaws can catch'em. An old friend, Frank Keene a retired outlaw, told me years ago when I was fusing about getting a ticket for something I had no idea I was doing wrong said: "dummy, don't you know the marine patrol only catches honest people, us outlaws never get caught" He went on to say real outlaws are always watching out and know where the man is every day, he says they are creatures of habit and real outlaws know where the man is all the time and is always taking precautions. He said honest fishermen don't pay any attention because they don't intend to break any laws and when they do so accidentally they are easily caught..... Okayyyyyy
6/15/09 We finally charged the batteries and went fishin. John, Dusty and meee. Caught 14 different species of fish. Actually caught a couple we could eat too. Nice drum, whiting and a couple of croakers, couple of pig fish, those went to the frying pan. Other stuff we caught that I can remember, and we released, sail cats, sailors choice, lookdowner, angel fish, spade fish, regular cat, spot, cuban queen and a couple of others. Fished just off the jetties at St. Augustine Inlet. The kingfish tournament last weekend saw plenty of 30-40 pounderes, cobia and rays are still off the beach rather late but the water is still cool. Offshore the fish are already starting to move to deeper water 90ft plus according to my spear fishing buddies. the fish have left the near shore wrecks and headed for the cooler deeper water near the ledge and gulf stream.
6/6/09 All my fishin buddies are telling me stories of limit catches of huge red snapper offshore last week, giant cobia, whopper grouper. This is the early summer bite and apparently it is good! Our buddy John the fisherman, said he caught a couple of giant snook this week. Yes they're out of season but the fish don't read the newspaper and don't know they're not supposed to bite. We are quite sure John turned them loose......but then again, I thought ignorance of the law was no excuse. Offshore dolphin fishing has been excellent too. No! Not porpoise dolphins, not flipper....dolphin is a cracker name for Mahi which is the new politically correct name that comes from Hawaii.....people wouldn't order dolphin off the menu thinking the cook hacked up flipper...so they called it Mahi and sell it easily. I still think there are more offshore fish than we have seen in 30 years because not as many people are going because fuel is expensive for the average amateur. Die hards will pay whatever it takes, always have. Speaking of fuel, I suspect oil will go right back and beyond 100 dollars a barrel in short order. I think the oil guys got the price down last year before the election trying to keep McCain in control but since they lost to Obama they might as well run it back up again....no, I am not a democrat just a realist. What you guys think about the new menu fish "Tilapia" ??? Did you know that is actually a fish that was brought here from the Nile in Egypt more than 40 years ago by the game and fish people to control equatic weeds? Tilapia is a fancy name for a lousy tasting fish. You catch'em with nets cause all they eat is mud and weeds...they taste like it too. Restaurants love Tilapia because they're cheap those things raise like rabbits. Ronnie don't eat no tilapia....formerly known as Nile perch.
5/18/09 It's actually raining today, first time since 2008. The way its coming down the fish will come to us pretty soon. Did I ever tell you the story about a couple of friends of mine fishing in the ditch? True story. About 40 years ago a couple of friends of mine had been at the Rodman Resovoir bream fishing and loaded up....with bream and Buds....on the way back to town they decided to have a little fun. They pulled off highway 19 just outside Palatka, opened the trunk got out their coolers and set up on the side of the road at the ditch which was full of water at the time. They took their stringer of about 50 bream and threw them on the edge of the road in clear sight then popped a couple of tops and sat on their coolers with lines and bobbers in the ditch. Didn't take long. Within half an hour they had a dozen people stopped and fishing in the ditch. They exclaimed they had caught their limit and loaded up and went on home while the mob that had gathered fished till dark. So help me, it's true. to my knowledge nobody has ever owned up to stopping to fish along side Jimmy and Sam. The newspaper says guys have been catching Cobia off the beach in schools of bait. I have seen the boats looking for free swimming cobia but haven't seen anybody catching one. It is that time of year.
5/3/09 Okay been running crazy selling property the last two weeks decided to take half a day off with a lifelong friend from Portland. Mitch Fields is national sales manager for Columbia...you know the people who make shirts, pants, shoes and stuff like that. He brought me a new test shirt to try called "ice" some crazy new material that hugs your skin but is soft and flexible kind of feels like the old banlon stuff we wore in the 60s but it's not made out of oil. The theory is this thing wicks moisture from your skin instantly when its hot thus cooling you quickly. It works. Look for it coming to a retailer near you soon. I caught one scrawney flounder and one whopper. Mitch caught a damned ole jack and that was it. A game warden came snooping around and while he was writing a guy in a sail boat a ticket for parking in the waterway for the past two weeks, we slipped into a back creek where the warden couldn't get in his 25 foot barge with two kickers. Why do they need a gas guzzler like that anyway in the waterway? All it's good for is playing bumper boats. I did see in the Jax paper guys are catching tuna fish and dolphin at the ledge off St. Augustine and I know for a fact some buddies of mine caught a bunch of red snapper and grouper and a couple of cobia in 95 ft of water last Sunday. I have my own theory on offshore fishing which has been superb the last year....gas too high for non serious fishermen...the die hards would pay ten bucks a gallon to go so there are more fish...lots more fish. They tell me there are lots of Jewfish on the wrecks too. One diver told me he had a Jewfish steal his whole string of fish and scared him half to death pulling on it, he said the monster could have swallowed him tanks and all. Since becoming a protected species they are making a huge comeback and becoming a nuisance to fishermen and divers alike. State needs to start issueing limited take certificates for those things like alligators. When I was a kid, I remember gigantic 500 pounders stealing fish from guys fishing off bridges and docks all the time, they would strip an entire stringer full of sheepshead in one swallow, break the rope and all. Saw some guys filet one on the beach one day...they used a chain saw...so help me a chain saw. they're that big and good eatin' Don't know what those guys used for a fishin pole but betcha it had a chain for line..... RT
3/27/09 thought about goin fishin today, nobody looking at condos till tomorrow and the damned battery is dead on the boat, of course. 40 days of no use of a boat kills the battery every time so I charged it up yesterday so it will only be half dead in a few weeks when I decide to raise the cover again if the wind quits blowing. The good thing about golfin is this: You never have a dead battery, the weather is never too bad, doesn't matter whether they bite or not and you don't have to go home and wash your clubs down and then clean your golfs in the dark with mosquitos biting...you just go home and have a drink and laugh at O'Reilly.
3/23/09 No, I haven't been fishin. Wind blowin too hard. Woody Brown is supposed to report what he catches in a couple of days when it calms down.
3/17/2009 Went fishing after the Sheepshead on the moon last week. Did good. Dusty caught 2, Suzanne caught 4, Mary caught 8 and Ronnie caught 1. Common! Yeah, one but I had to bait everybody's hook, net the fish, get the hooks out and get'em rigged back up when they lost hooks. I did pretty good to get one. Clell Coleman told me he caught his redfish limit two days in a row this week. Clell is a retired minister so I know he told the truth. Sounds like he slayed'em huh? Only catch is, the limit is one per day. There for the obvious comeback is" "we could have caught a hundred but the limit is one so we left them for another day"
3/10/2009 It's a full moon and we don't catch fish on a full moon as a rule. An old salt told me one time he thought the shrimp and bait got out and moved around at night and the moon made it so fish could see them and eat them up. Then the fish go to sleep during the daytime so we never catch anything till the moon goes dark. Yes, fish sleep. When diving I have seen them just laying there not doing anything, you have to push them out of the way. On a dark moon you'll see them chasing bait, swimming around moving all the time. Anyway this full moon marks one special event. Sheepshead spawn in the Gulf of Mexico on the March and April moon every year. I'm going over tonight and fish tomorrow,it's a gas. Catch'em left and right and it only happens about 10 days a year. The entire west coast of Florida shuts down for the Sheephead deal, you can't get the garbage picked up, a nail driven or a leak fixed they're all fishin. See you Friday.
2/25/09 The big spot tournament is coming this weekend. A rodeo of fishermen trying to catch a redfish with the most spots. Most spots wins a big prize worth alot. How bout a contest for most paint spots on t shirts? I'd win that hands down. This coming full moon it's gonna be jail birds galore. The sheepsheads are going to be spawning on Florida's west coast and I will take two days off in the middle of the week and be there. The trick is to buy your live shrimp here and haul'em with you. When you get over there, the bait shops will be sold out. The locals start hoarding live shrimp about a week before the full moon and keep'em all in aquariums so us east coasters have to fish with smelly dead baits that only catch a fish now and then. RT
stardate 2/18/2009-captain's bloggg-only fishing I've been doing this week is for all the left over Valentine candy at the grocery and drug stores. Always a sucker for half off sales and the best part is you can mail the leftovers to some sweetie and claim it got delayed in the mail! Gotta love Walgreens and CVS huh? Fishin season starts again March 1st.
Feb 14, 2009 The full moon is usually not real good for fishin' but if you like catching drum and whiting the "whiting hole" just south of the 312 bridge has been jammed with boats all week on the high tide change. They are hauling them in big time. Trout season is closed till March. Warm weather is turning the fish on it appears and Ronnie declares winter is officially over as of today.
Feb 2, 2009 got in a couple of days before the trout season ended last weekend. We couldn't catch a cold. I'm goin golfin till end of the month. Maybe a fish will bite later on. I hate fishin and everybody who fishes this time of year. RT
January 14, 2009 been raining and cold with temps in the 50s and 60s....too many good days to spend a day like this on the water right now. Did I ever tell you about the four dollar shrimp? True story. Twenty years ago I went into Devil's Elbow and asked the baitshop owner Mr. Eatman for a pound of dead shrimp. He wrapped them up and said "Four Dollars"....I said what? Four dollars. I told him I been get'em from Jack's place down the river for two dollars! He said: "why don't you go get'em from Jack" ... I said "Jack's out of'em"....he looked at me and said: "Son, if I was out of shrimp they'd be a dollar a pound!" Four dollars please. I've been telling that story for 20 years and laugh about it to myself every time. The true ones are always the best. RT
Dec 29, 2008 weather has been perfect since Christmas, 70 degrees no wind, perfect tides. Just no time to get to'em. Maybe in January. Been watching the birds fish off the beach and they're doing pretty good. Saw a couple of small whales yesterday too about a mile off shore.
Dec 22,2008 Dusty and Ronnie killed'em yesterday. Caught weakfish and redfish. This could be the best year of inshore fishing in our area in 25 years. Guides are saying the same thing.
Ronnie Tumlin writes this report from time to time. Let us know about your big one that got away.
