Sheepshead, trout and black drum still biting

Enjoy the good days now, my friends, because in a few months, we’ll be missing the easy fishing when the late winter doldrums have us all praying for spring.

I can personally attest to the phenomenal sheepshead bite happening at the Mayport jetties, and others told me about fantastic fishing for trout, redfish and black drum happening throughout the lower St. Johns River.

The whiting and pompano decided to stick out last week’s cold spell in the surf, although it remains to be seen if they’ll do the same after this week’s chill.

Now for the bad news: the weather is not looking good for our weekend warrior fleet.

Friday’s forecast calls for northeast winds around 10 to 15 knots and choppy seas, which is hardly worth skipping work. Saturday and Sunday will be very windy, and there’s a chance for some rain and lightning in the mix, too.

Keep an eye on the weather, but if that forecast holds, consider catching up on all those chores you put off.

Or better yet, go hunting.

Waterfowl season opens back up on Saturday, and a few local Wildlife Management Areas are open for small game hunting. If all goes to plan, I’ll be deer hunting up in Georgia.

Jetties and the River

Between the wind and a hefty inlet swell, fishing the jetties on Sunday was anything but comfortable.

But it’s easy to ignore all of that when the fish are biting as well as they were.

My fiance and I ended the day with eight sheepshead and a black drum in the cooler. Let me tell you, that’s made for some fine eating at my house this week.

When I got back to the ramp, I ran into Capt. Kirk Waltz. He had just wrapped up an even better day with a few clients, who caught 22 sheepshead and some nice redfish, too.

Waltz said they were anchored on the inside of the south rocks and were picking off several fish at a time between lulls. He said it’s worth waiting if the bite seems to go cold, as big schools of sheepshead roam the rocks like a herd of, well, sheep, and will eventually make their way back to you.

I checked back in with Waltz on Wednesday, and he said they’re still biting. He said the water temperature is dropping, but he says that will convince fish to “put on the feedbag” in anticipation of colder water moving in.

“Remember, the rocks hold substantial heat on clear days by virtue of the sun,” he wrote in an email. “This helps to keep surrounding water slightly warmer, and I believe it helps.”

Despite the questionable forecast this weekend, Capt. Jeff Wansor said he’s planning to take some clients to the big rocks on Saturday. He said he’s been slaying the sheepshead out there.

ICW and the backcountry

Wansor said the creeks have been “stuffed” with trout and redfish, especially little ones.

Capt. David Borries said he had a good fishing trip on Tuesday, catching a few nice redfish, “quite a few” rat reds and surprisingly, a 6-and-a-half pound flounder.

He’s fishing drop-offs and ledges in the ditch and larger creeks around low tide using mud minnows and soft plastic baits. Creek mouths are also producing fish. The smaller the creek, the better, he said.

This time of year, Borries said if you can find a day with a late afternoon low tide, you’ll likely score.

Capt. Chip Wingo said the water has cooled down, and the fish are fired up.

He’s catching black drum, sheepshead and redfish on rolldowns in the ditch as far north as Nassau Sound. If you can find places where the bank rolls to around 14 feet of water with a shell bottom, you’re in the money, he said. He’s catching fish on shrimp and fiddler crabs.

He said the trout bite is “really good” in the Fort George Inlet, and I saw another online report suggesting the same.

Capt. Ron Schurr, who does a lot of fishing in the creeks north of the St. Johns River, said he caught a trout on every cast while fishing soft plastic baits on Tuesday. He said the redfish bite is producing at low tide on shrimp and mud minnows. He also caught a few sheepshead in the skinny water.

Surf and shore

Noel Kuhn, who gets paid to take people surf fishing, told me that last week of fishing may have been the best he’s experienced in the last 10 years.

He said he caught limits of pompano from Ponte Vedra Beach to New Smyrna Beach using clams and sand fleas. He’s also catching lots of big whiting up to 18 inches.

Kuhn said he’s also catching redfish and black drum near the inlets.

The air temperature is 49 degrees as I write this report, and Kuhn will be nervously watching the water temperature during this cold front.

“This cold snap may ruin things for us,” he wrote me. “Watch the water temperatures. If it gets below 64 degrees, you need to head south to catch up with this huge school of pompano.”

Down at the Jacksonville Beach pier, Spencer Brogden said there are lots of big whiting being caught on shrimp with a load of bluefish mixed in.

Brogden, a pier fishing expert, will be the featured speaker at the Jacksonville Offshore Fishing Club’s meeting Thursday. If that’s not enough to get you there, I heard they’re serving clam chowder.

Offshore

I made it offshore on Friday with Lou DeNicola and his crew. Fishing between 100 to 120 feet of water, we got into a steady bottom-fish bite and made it back to the hill with a respectable box of beeliners, sea bass and a few triggerfish.

There’s still some cudas lingering around, and we were chased off several spots by armies of red snapper.

We had high hopes of catching cobia, but we just got one undersized fish that day.

According to the radio chatter, a few guys got into some wahoo, which was confirmed by a secondhand report I heard this week. I also heard through the grapevine that people are catching tripletail.

Capt. Kris Kell ate well this week. He went offshore on Friday and came back with a limit of black sea bass and a 26-inch gag grouper.

Of course, none of this information is relevant to your weekend, because the marine forecast is lousy through Sunday.

Freshwater

When I called Jon Hamilton at Black Creek Marina this week, he gave it to me straight.

“We ain’t got a whole lot of things happening,” he said. “When the west winds start hitting, no one is going out.”

He said the channel cats are everywhere, eating minnows, shiners and shrimp from the docks to the middle of the river.

Over in Green Cove Springs, Rick Hamilton of R & J Tackle said the catfish are also biting well in the creeks.

The only other fishing he had to speak of was a decent striped bass bite near the Shands Bridge. He said fish were caught on live shiners and lipless crank baits.