   Augustine Fishing and Weather-Ronnie Tumlin
Contact Ronnie for more information and lies-send me your pictures! Left to right is RT with a nice 23 incher, John with a nice 19 inch trout and Dusty with a 26 inch red all caught the last couple of weeks on artificials
Jan 19, 2012 was gonna walk away from the office yesterday and go fishin with my buddies in the pics above but the weather forecast was rain. It did rain Wednesday around here and I could drink all of it. Never ever listen to a weather report before goin fishing unless you are going off shore. If I am going off shore I am more than cautious. Had friends go down at sea not once but twice before. Fortunately I was not along. Some of them came home, had some friends who did not one time. Always double the forecast when you go off shore, but cut it in half if you're staying close. Gotta work today. Maybe next week.
January 10, 2012 ain't got time to go fishin be back soon, weather is too warm in the 70s every day and sunny, need some cloudy cool days in the 50s to catch some fish. I swear my plants are starting to bud out a month or more early. Could winter be over before it got started? Sure looks like it. Today the forecast was rain, all we got was fog and then sun and back to 70 degrees again.
Jan 6, 2012 started the year off with a bang killed'em again on the west coast been too busy to talk much about it. will report later RT
Dec 26, 2011 still killin'em the reds have slowed down a little bit but we're still getting at least one every quick trip in the 20-25 inch range. Trout still doing good and the octopus are doing real good. Yes, octopus. Now get this, we are in the icw in 10 feet of water dragging gulps along the bottom with the trolling motor. dusty got a hit and said "it's something small" then wham! He said now its hung....I said the boat is moving and the drag is not moving....whatever you snagged is coming with us. He cranked and cranked it was like he had a concrete block on. An octopus 3 feet long....really....3 feet I have a picture....he had latched onto a small rock bass Dusty had hooked and wasn't letting go. I netted the octo and told him to behave and I would unhook the fish and let him go....he sat there looking at me with those green eyes and never offered to grab me with a tentacle. I got the pliers unhooked the rocky and lowered octo fish n all back into the water....he blew water out of the blow holes, blinked once and back into the abyss with his fish. I could not have made this up folks and I have a pic to prove it. Happy new year RT
Dec 14, 2011 rain rain rain
Dec 9, 2011 Kept catchnem until yesterday, then they got lockjaw or talked it over and decided we were gonna catch'em all if they didn't move. Could be the moon too, or maybe a cold front that blew thru yesterday got down to 50 degrees right back up to 70 today though. History says the bite will slow as we get closer to Christmas. Yesterday we almost got skunked till Dusty snagged a trout. We turned him back and decided to go home. Will try again today. Gotta go back to work pretty soon.....bait ain't cheap neither is boat gas.
Nov 28, 2011 Killed'em again, we're gonna have to find something else to do this is too easy. Doc Beckett and I went to the gulf Friday and in 3 hours on total artificial baits boated 9 redfish, 6 trout, 1 flounder and three gigantic spanish mackeral. We are using some new soft baits that a major bait maker came out with who has traditionally made only hard baits....Mirro something I think....anyway these softies are shaped like a small mullet, have sparklies inside you can see right through the thing and it has a chartreuse paddle tail. It wiggles all over when you pull it through the water. No scent just action and visibility and they catch fish. Weather turning lousy this week supposedly so mayyyybe we'll catch a few in December we'll see. Talked to a guy on the west coast who has a huge bait shop and he said the hottest lure on the planet is what we were using AND the Gulp pink ghost shrimp. He was sold out of both! RT
Nov 21, 2011 as you can see in the picture above we killed'em this weekend. We started out with trout in mind, but the trout had lockjaw. We caught over a dozen fish like this one above in about an hour tossing rubber tail jigs in no more than 18 inches of water on a dead low tide. Suzanne and Mary had a big time too, Suzanne got her hook straightened out when a giant red gave that last run when he saw the boat, Mary broke one off after a ten minute tussel when he got in the shells right at the boat. Hard to turn a big one when you were rigged for trout. We boated a dozen reds Saturday in about an hour. They tore up our trout rigs, bent hooks it was a blast. The next day the tides were wrong with the times we had to work with, but there is always this weekend. This is November folks and the fish are here even for amateurs like us! RT
November 16, 2011 It's November folks....trout are in! Even I your faithful reporter has been able to load the boat the last three days in three different spots. No fish creek actually had fish in it on a high tide rising and waning full moon...worst combination you can get, caught 6 keepers in the 16-18 inch range which is niiiice for around here. Caught'em trolling with silver flake rubber jibs and paddle tails. Somebody please tell me why I cannot catch these fish casting but troll back and forth by the same bend in the creek and catch'em. Stop and cast, no bites zero zip zilch zeroooo. You tell me. Yesterday buddy John and I went for 3 hours and caught 15 by the bridge trolling up and down the length of the bridge. Stopped and casted numerous times all we caught were blue fish casting...go figure. Wanna see the pictures, send me an email and I'll send you the pics rtumlin@crescentbeachrealty.com
The flounder bite is good too. Saw several guys with nice 3 lb flounders. I caught one casting with a gold spinner bait but he was small. I am too lazy to go catch mud minnows and sit there bumping mudders along the bottom trying to catch a flatfish. too boring when trout are striking. Talked to several guys who target reds and they are doing good too. I love to catch a nice red but I would rather have a couple small trout for the pan any day.
Sept 26, 2011 Okay jury is back in: My fishing guide friend took John and Bernie out last Friday and they had a big time, they boated half a dozen keeper sized reds, three big flounder and two keeper trouts in a few hours, finished up by noon had the fish cleaned and in the pan by 1. Caught most of them on mud minnows fishing over oyster bars and grass flats. RT
Sept 22, 2011 My guide buddy Chappy McBride reports he is catching fish left and right on the high tides in the flats...he says the reds are in the grass on flood tides and you can see them tailing on the oyster beds way up on the west side of the icw. So, I passed this info on to a couple of buddies of mine John and Bernie and they have hired Chappy to see if he's blowin smoke or not. they are going out tomorrow. I'll report the catch if there is a catch or isn't a catch. RT
August 29, 2011 Went to the keys last week for the ultimate....we dodged storms and wind as the cane went by out to sea and headed to New York but the fish are always hungry. Killed the snapper, even believe it or not caught a couple of 20 inch speckled sea trout snapper fishin on the gulf side...never heard of that before ....plenty of lobsters in our old stand by holes caught all we could eat all week. I swear you could catch fish in a bucket down there. Around here, catching a few redfish these days which is normal for this time of year....there are so many fingerling mullet in the water it is hard to find a fish that isn't already stuffed with bait fish.
August 16, 2011 broke all the rules the past week, actually went fishing here in the waterway twice! Didn't get skunked but only caught a couple of keeper trout and flounder. got short reds but were fun to catch. We fished on a full moon and that is bad bad. I think the fish eat all night and sleep all day when it is a full moon but hey, haven't had time to turn around in over a month so had to go do it. Heading to the keys saturday to guaranteed catch some serious fish...be there a week. Book it Danno, we'll fill the box with snapper maybe even a few lobsters if the water is clear inside. RT
July 5, 2011 Killed'em We closed up shop and went fishing in Gulf of Mexico this past weekend again during the fourth. the fish calendar said nothing was going to bite but we went anyway. Spent the day Saturday catching scallops which everybody said were everywhere. We saw an armada of boats and got in the middle of them. Took four of us three hours to catch 140 scallops, another hour to clean'em then cooked the whole mess. Filled us all up. figured it cost us about 100 bucks a person but it was great. Sunday we fished all day without even a bite. We stopped by the outer marker just before dark for one last try and within 15 minutes boated half a dozen keeper trout and a 6 pound spanish. Dinner again and got off the snide. Next day the calendar said fish would not bite. Fished half a day and got zero. At noon, I said take a toss with a mud minnow against this log at the mouth of a creek and it would be our last toss. Dusty boated a 6 pound flounder...dinner again....still undefeated, still never been skunked. Fished another ten minutes and Ronnie swore he had the world record flounder on. Bit with a nibble then slowly moved off. Set the hook got a couple of tugs then it just sat down...I figured it had to be huge. Only had ten pound tackle. After ten minutes of tugging and chasing, our world record flounder came to the boat.....a 5 footer....alligator. He had my jig hanging out of the side of his mouth like a cigar...he surfaced 5 ft from the boat took a look at us we looked at him....laughed then .....broke him off and went home. Only one fish for half a day but a great laugh for a story and the fish was plenty for dinner for four. True story I swear! RT
June 24, 2011 Business has been good but we did take off a day and go chasing red fish...had success too Dusty's wife caught a huge 26 incher on a rubber tailed jig on a sand bar full of mullet, we just thought we would try it and bang! caught a couple of other small ones, my buddies tell me flounder are doing pretty good too. The lack of rain has cleared the water up big time and all kinds of fish are hanging about inshore. I'd trade the fish for rain right now, this place is like a desert. RT
May 15, 2011 Haven't wet a hook since March Been too windy to chase a cobia. I hear the hard cores have found a few but the rays look like flying Christmas trees. I guess those fishermen in south Florida are just bad shots. If you could get your hands on a giant manta betcha could get a thousand dollars worth of tackle off their wings. My diving buddies say the close in wrecks are vacant. Duhhhh....I told them they gotta go 30 miles. Everybody is fishing the close stuff because of gasoline prices...just like they did Sunday. Go east young man and break the bank for fuel and you will catch fish. I figure the cost of grouper is now up to about 300 bucks a pound not counting boat and equipment costs and not paying yourself minimum wage for the time spent catching dinner. "They" are protecting grouper and snapper to the point now that you can't get a decent fish in a restaurant any more. All yo can get is mahi mahi which is a dolphin...no, that is a porpoise....dolphin is a fish fish, it does not breath air nor make movies. You can still get a tuna, but this tilapia and basa? Go talk to a distributor and ask where these tilapia and basa come from? A distributor told me they come from southeast Asia and are grown in the nastiest water you ever saw. What has this country come to that we have to import farm raised Asian fish to eat? I don't even want to know what kind of runoff goes into those ponds, where the nearest latrine is....they don't have waste treatment plants you know. Been there. The tree huggers have turned to fish huggers too, what's next? Beef from Argentina? I've had steaks in Buenos Aires at the finest restaurants. It sucks. Grass fed, they cut the meat with the grain, tough as a boot and tastes like dried hay. The greenies will make a vegetarian out of me yet. RT
March 26, 2011 Sheeps head season! Man, am I glad there is finally something biting I can catch. Loaded the boat with sheepers last week on the full moon, they're spawning again. Caught tons of little males turned them loose, but we caught about 100 pounds (gross weight, guts feathers and all) of sheeps heads, snapper and even a Spanish mackeral all on live shrimps on the bottom in 22 feet of water. Caught this huge Spanish reeling in, the thing was close to 24 inches. Yes it was genuine Spanish I broiled and ate it...fed four of us. My favorite broiling fish. Sheepers and snapper fried up real nice, had enough for an army and an army of sorts is what they fed too. Everybody says the whiting bite is on too. I caught one that must have been two pounds last week and a nice 18 inch trout fishing with my buddy John, he said it was enough for him and he fed the neighbors too.
February 2, 2011 I have it on good authority that there is a huge redfish run at the St Augustine Inlet going on right now. It looked like hundreds of boats scattered all over the inlet today on a Monday. When the fish bite everybody drops their tool belts and runs for the skiff. Weather is 74 degrees and light wind. Supposed to go back into the high 50s in a couple of days. I may have to shut down and go myself but been too busy. When people want to buy property you gotta jump. RT
Mid January 2011 Too damned cold and windy. I feel like the ice age is here. Where is Al Gore? What's that jack ass saying now? I made a new years resolution. No fishin till it gets above 60 degrees
Almost got skunked mid Dec 2010 We thought the other day (Sunday) the weather man might be right again, 70 degrees light wind low tide 11am. Perfect huh? Wrong again. The high for the day was 52, wind blew 10-15 was miserable. We gave it up after 4 hours of zero bites. Then on the way back to Suwannee in the brackish part of south pass there was a huge circle of boats right in the channel probably 15 boats or more in a circle. Everybody was catching fish like crazy. We pulled up next to a pontoon boat with a bunch of buys who looked like they were leaving. They said common in and take our spot we got the limit. We did. We only caught one keeper after catching roughly 20 reds and trout so we left too. Moral of the story: Had we quit a couple hours earlier like all the softies we would have found that mob and caught a good mess. Seems the pontoon boat was the one who found the fish. They were bream fishing with worms and started catching reds then one thing led to another. Crazy huh? There were guys in 50 thousand dollar Rangers pulling up crowding the guys on a pontoon boat! Good laugh. RT
Mid December 2010 weather is horrible...but....Man, the fish are bitin if you're tough enough for 50 degree windy days and sometimes mist. Last Saturday (yeah yeah I know, real fishermen don't go fishin on Saturdays-hey we been working every single day with buyers and sellers it's still busy) we caught a 70 degree sunny day and said let's do it. Doc Beckett caught a 22 in ch red and 24 inch gator trout, I caught my regular mix of trout and big reds but I only fished a little, I kept Benny's hook baited and lines untangled and hooks out of nets...it was fast and furious for about two hours. We loaded the boat with shorts but we had a good mess of fish 15-24 inches. More than I wanted to clean. But what I didn't know was that Tennesseeans are pretty nice guys when there isn't a football game going on in Gainesville. They had a bunch of fish and electric knives and I said when you guys get through can I borrow your knife? The guy said better than that he'd clean'em for me. Damn, I'd a kept a few more had we knowed that. Caught'em on cajun thunder corks and live shrimps, used some lead heads and gulps even caught one on a mirro lure just for good measure. Which proves when they're bitin like right now you can throw the kitchen sink and catch fish. Yes I have pictures for my Texican nay sayers.
Mid November 2010 They tell me trout are biting but all are 1/2 inch short of legal. Think we'll wait a few more weeks and see if they grow a little besides been windy and cold (50s and 60s at night). Trout like to bite after a cool snap when things warm back into the 80s which it is fixin to do.
10/27/2010 I'm telling ya if my Buddies Bernie and John can catch fish....they are practically jumpin in da boat! I took my buddy Bernie from Chattanooga and John from Ocean Village Club fishin on a SATURDAY!! Amateur day. Jet skis everywhere, sail boats, cabin cruisers, poor guys with women and kids hollerin while they're tryin to fish you name it. We caught at least 20 reds and half a dozen trout. I got a nice flounder and brought that one home for dinner. Those two guys couldn't catch a fish at the seafood market but with meeee as guide they had a blast and trust me on this if I can catch'em you can too. St Aug inlet and matanzas are still full a fish....and this is not high grade bs either RT
10/15/2010 Dusty came back and guess what.....moon started filling, reds got lockjaw and Dusty loaded the boat with catfish, ladyfish and a damned old boot....no really a black rubber boot. Talk about snake bit? The finger mullet are starting to get too big we either gotta find bigger fish or smaller baits. My buddy John Darr tells me he caught a bunch of trout and reds on the Gulf coast last week fishing these corks with rattles in'em. They run a leader from the cork about 24 inches to a hook and use strips of pinfish for baits. Sounds reasonable I think I believe him, too crazy not to be true. RT
10/12/2010 Loaded the boat! Red fish man they're everywhere Dusty gave up and went to the Carolinas to watch leaves, so I called Doc Beckett and went fishing. We killed'em. 9 reds in 2 hours, broke a couple off had a blast. Mud minnows and finger mullet in very shallow water on the falling tide within site of the fort. I expect this to last another couple of weeks or till the moon fills then it will slack off. The offshore guys say the Cobia are coming back south and they're catching them on wrecks off shore. My buddy Skip in Houston makes fun of us and our fishin, he doesn't even eat sheepsheads. Probably likes mullet, most texicans do.
10/3/2010 Dusty is now the catfish king! We tried some finger mullet around the inlet yesterday. Dusty caught ten ladyfish up to 2 feet long, half a dozen 3 lb catfish, a rock bass, and a 10 lb bluefish. He should have simply cleaned the bait and taken them home for a fish fry would probably eat lots better. Ronnie caught a red, only 17 inches but fun to catch. We parked next to a guide who had one of his clients catch a whopper red probably 15 pounds. They were using rods big enough to go marlin fishin, every time we got a good bite they broke our line so we gave that hole up. They were too big outside the slot limit anyway. Water has turned dirty with winds out of the southeast, wind changed to northeast last night so it should clear up and trout oughta be coming in real soon.
Big News! 9/30/2010 Giant flounder showed up on the moon in the creeks, finger mullet everywhere and that's the bait according to the flounder king. Also Chappy my guide buddy tells me redfish are everywhere, big and easy to catch. Now the kicker: Shrimp. That's right guys with cast nets near the Palm Coast bridge are catching huge shrimp. Just pull up near the bridge and start throwing a cast net. When asking Chappy about the shrimp rumor, he said "fact man, catch all you want" he also said you can throw a net most anywhere in the waterway right now and catch'em. A bumper crop of nice shrimp.
9/1/2010- Just got back from a week trip to the keys. Best lobster year in my lifetime. Even we got the limit every day we tried'em and we never get the limit a bunch of other people we know got their limits too. Not bad for a bunchy of old farts over 60. Fishin? We tried trolling Hawk Channel for grouper...all we caught were weeds. We tried yellowtails on the outer reefs....did "fair" got 5-10 keepers every day we tried that, not real good fishin. A shark kept stealing our yellowtails one day when we were doing okay but that ruined it so we quit. Here's the surprise: Mangrove Snapper on the bay side. Several locals said they never heard of such. I went due north towards the everglades 9 miles to 10 feet of water in the weed beds. Jumped over the boat looking for lobster holes and kept seeing stray snapper here and there. Decided to try something. Put out a chum block and just started drifting. I was hoping to be like the piper and toll some up as we moved across the flats. Lo and behold, within 10 minutes we had a swarm of keepers following the boat. We caught the limit in less than an hour. Had a big time. That was our last day but we remember where we were and how we did it. I marked an X on the bottom of the boat right on the spot. Best part of it, couple of locals admiring our catch thought we were liein when we told how we caught em.
Locally here at St Aug I hear the trout are doing good around lights on docks at night and reds are doing okay in the flats. Whiting are still in the surf. RT
8/5/2010-loaded the box as predicted. Fried'em up as predicted. Whiting out of the surf is as good as it gets. A couple of friends told me today they have been catching reds north of St Aug in the creeks no problem on mud minnows....so long as the water is moving they tell me.....my flounder guru says they're in all the usual places right now. Some guy in St Aug newspaper showed off a 12 pounder!! Till the next high tide, RT
8/2/2010 Okay gave up trying to get the battery charged on the boat. Got to looking at the Bahama blue water out infront of the house yesterday and couldn't stand it. Usually means the whiting will bite in the surf when its that clear. Went to Publix and got some fresh shrimp....never ever fish with bait you wouldn't eat yourself.....walked down on the beach at 7 after a great storm passed and within 10 minutes boxed four nice whiting and used up my pocket full of shrimp....turned'em all loose. Too late to go clean fish. Tell you what though, as suspected they bit just as fast as I could get it in the water just about 3 feet past where the waves break on a falling tide. It's usually where the drop off starts and they hang right there to see what the surf churns up. No catfish, no jacks, no blues....all whiting. Think I'll take my giant cooler down this afternoon and load up. Trust me on this, even a cave man can do it when the water is crystal clear blue. RT
7/14/2020 Haven't had time to go fishin, too busy selling condos on the beach. Boat battery is dead boat under a tree collecting leaves. Time is coming though, the jungle telegraph says reds are dong good and flounder exceptionally well right now. The fiddlers are biting good too. RT
6/6/2010 Fred Bacon's sons and grandsons were observed over here Saturday goin fishin. Dad would have approved, he's been gone a little over a week. I understand they caught a ton of nice flounder on mud minnows. Fred taught them well and so fishing goes on, teach a kid to fish, one of life's rules to live by. An old friend who has been gone 30 years who co-hosted a fishing show with me always said teach a kid to fish and you'll never have to worry about him getting into trouble. Trueism if there ever was one. A couple of buddies and I used to skip school once every couple of months and we went to the Flagler pier or Crescent Beach to surf fish all day. Got caught once, I am sure the principal laughed about it behind our backs but he whooped us all three good. Same for golfin. My grandparents on both sides played and always said if you teach a kid to play he'll most likely never get into trouble. I never did, except for coming home late....dark thirty....but she knew where I was.
5/28/2010 This past week was a bad one. We lost one of our long time fishing buddies Fred Bacon to cancer, damnit. Fred and I caught enough fish over the past 35 years to fill Sea World ten times over. To my knowledge, we did things in the 70s that nobody ever heard of. We were in a creek at Crescent Beach one afternoon and were catching redfish and big trout like it was a magazine shoot. We ran out of live shrimp, they ate all our rubber grub tails. All we had left in the boat were a few black bass plugs and rubber worms. I tied on a frog backed chub floater and Fred said what are you doing? I said its all we got man. He laughed. So help me on the first cast a red fish blew the plug 2 feet out of the water and missed...while I was fussin and still reeling in real slow, I looked over at Fred and he already had a Devil's Horse out of the box. The rest is history. A few weeks later Fred came by the office and said let's go, gotta show ya something. Back in those days when Fred said let's go, that meant one thing. Fish were bitin! We got out on the flats by mid afternoon and Fred started throwing a red rubber worm rigged with a slide sinker and bass hook. I laughed and said no way.....we loaded the boat. Back then nobody fished with such....nobody. Fred was one of the best fisherman there ever was and a better friend. We will all miss him, but I am quite sure he has a big one on the line right now. RT
5/18/2010 Couple of buddies of mine caught some really nice 30-60 pound cobia last week on the annual May migration up the east coast, our home inspector we use, Marshall Schneider, has been catching pompano in the surf! He's a yankee and has been catchin'em. Must be easy. Says he's digging up sand fleas and throwing out in the surf far as he can. That is the way to do it so yankee ingenuity is still at hand I suppose. Me? Went out trying to catch some spanish. They were splashing, chasing bait, jumping out of the water. We chummed, spooned, jigged, plugged, threw everything at'em in the boat. All we got were some giant lady fish. Dusty Dancy is king of the lady fish, not a title to be envious of trust me. We didn't get skunked however and managed to boat a couple of nice trout including one whopper that the captain managed to beat off Suzanne's hook at the boat with the net. Spit happens, but she's still pissed. The cobia have moved on north now but two saturdays ago, there were no less than 20 boats out infront of the house 1/2 mile off the surf. I'll betcha those still swimming will look like Christmas trees by the time they get there.....wherever there is. They. I think they is the most used most cornfusing word in the language. They're catchin'em at the inlet. They're repaving the boat ramp, they say if I get back on the flats the reds are biting....who is they? They changed the size limit, they stopped fishing in the gulf from the oil spill, they're trying to stop the oil leak, they're going to fine BP, they're going to sue BP...who is they? They oughta tell us who they are. Till the next fiasco on the water or when they tell me what they're catching, RT
3/18/2020 Fishing is outstanding especially if you go with meeee! The guys next door to our place at Suwannee went out in a 35 footer armed with $10,000 in equipment, hundreds of dollars worth of bait, a thousand dollars worth of fuel and enough good men on board to invade a small country. Ronnie? just my little flats boat, Dusty, Mary and Suzanne. I had one can of gulp baits, a handfull of jig heads and a hunch. First place I stopped we caught a dozen shorts and moved on, second place same thing, third place nuttin then I said let's go back to the second place those fish bit real good. Crew said they were shorts! Captain/guide said not so fast my friends. Where there are shorts there are good ones too we just gotta move around and find the right school I suspect. We caught 16 sand trout, 3 speckled sea trout and a flounder for the keeper box. Released at least 100 shorts of all varieties. We did find a school of keepers and it fast and furious for a good long time. Other boats around us weren't catching much, but the difference is I drift and bump baits along the bottom with the tide. Looks more natural and produces results. You can't anchor up and expect to catch'em. Burned 10 gallons of fuel all day. Women don't want me any more but fish still fear me and both are good things. The offshore crew? They came back with tales of broken lines, shorts, red snapper that are out of season you name it. They had two scrawney grouper that barely measured and asked if we could spare a few filets, we said sure....here's a couple of fish you clean'em. We decided catching fish on the west coast is so easy we brought the boat home to try here in our backyard where my buddies have been telling me rather unbelievable tales of huge schools of reds around the creeks and oyster bars. We'll seeeeee. If they're there Ronnie can find'em. Lots of folks want to know where's Suwannee? Best fishing village with a drinking problem on the west coast of Florida. Due west of Gainesville at the mouth of the Suwannee River. Condos there are nice, take a look at our condo index and look for Suwannee Cove. Not much else there but one restaurant, one honky tonk, couple of 50 year old fish camps a couple of boat ramps, a thousand trailers, dozens of canals, and probably 10 or 15 million dollar houses. The locals all have three boats, an airboat for the glades, flats boat for inshore and an offshore boat. The flats boat doubles as a bass boat fishing for blacks in fresh waters of the Suwannee River and the salt flats of the Gulf just outside the mouth of the river. Our varieties of catches now includes the following: Snook, Tarpon, Striped Bass, Grouper, Snapper, Flounder, Speckled Trout, Sand Trout, Sheepshead, Sea Bass, Bream, Catfish, Spanish Mackeral, Black Bass (fresh water), Cobia, Redfish and all within 30 minutes boat ride of the condo or less, a lot less. Suwannee is so far from nowhere you wouldn't know it was there if you didn't know it was there. We'll see in the next couple of days if my buddies are lying about the reds at Crescent Beach. RT
3/28/10 Went west...to the far west coast of florida due west of St Aug to Suwannee on the full moon. Trout have lockjaw, a couple of buddies were after Reds and did good catching several in the 24-30 inch range but that's easy. I was meat fishin, after sheepsheads. My buddy in Texas thinks we're nuts. Let me tell you a 10lb sheepshead on light tackle in 20 feet of water is a blast, they're spawning on the moon right now but not too hot, the water is still too cold after a horrendous winter which is actually a good thing, the old salts over there are predicting a huge bite on the April moon. Guides around here tell me they are killing the reds and large trout north of St Aug and I believe them. Now about sheepshead for you Texicans. Yeah they're a pain to clean but the meat is snow white and better than any redfish or trout...just as good as flounder maybe better than grouper. You dip'em in buttermilk, flour'em and flash fry small strips in 375 degrees peanut oil. Best there is. Till the next moon....RT
|
