It’s winter time. Pompano, black drum, flounder, and bluefish are all tell tale signs of winter here in Florida. Pompano and drum feed similarly on shrimp, sand-fleas, clams, or little crabs. There are plenty of fleas on the beach, but we also have them in stock now. We try and always keep live clam, live sand fleas, and live shrimp throughout the winter. We are also hoping to get some mud minnows in soon, as the flounder should be moving with this cold front.

Get outside and play!

Wife and I went to Kars Park Saturday 11/17 the first time at the lagoon and the wife caught her first fish!
Two Trout, she’s hooked on fishing now!

This was a very good nearshore week! Sharks have been chewing pretty steadily as are the giant reds. Mullet are working well for the reds. You can catch the mullet in the back basins. The shark are eating cut mullet and cut baits like bonita and Spanish mackeral. There are a lot of Spanish macks out there as well. Use small spoons and small jigs for them. Offshore was great on the days we were able to get out. A bunch of Mahi and plenty of kings. Good size on both too! Looks like we got a bunch of wind coming up again but lets hope it lays out a little. Happy Thanksgiving!

The inshore bite remains strong! This week we have still been seeing good numbers of redfish and some nice trout! Most the fish this week have been anywhere from 17 inches all the way up to 47 inches which is pretty typical this time of the year. With the approaching cold front we will probably start seeing less numbers of large fish and more slot sized fish. Typically, we will see a better trout bite with the cooler temps as well! Most fish are reacting well to small pieces of cut mullet and ladyfish fish along the grass flats of Mosquito Lagoon around the Tiger Shoals area. If you’re looking for an artificial bite, a Gulp jerkshad in pearl white fished weedless has been getting the job done! The Bull reds have been biting well along the beach and jetties. A large chunk bait has been the ticket, anything from mullet and ladyfish to bluefish and mackerel — if it’s bloody, they’ll eat it!

Another bite that has been picking up that I really like to do this time of the year is freshwater crappie fishing! These fish are a lot of fun and pretty tasty in the pan. Slow trolling small lures such as the Blakemoore runners can’t be beat! Small live minnows work well too. The best bite has been in between the 5 and 7 foot water depths. If you’re not into trolling, bouncing any small curly tail jig around the Lilly pads and reeds can be a lot of fun and productive as well. The water is very low right now so be careful with where you are running, I have found good numbers of fish all the way from Lake Poinsett to Lake Washington and everything in between.

Because the nearshore water temperature is still above 80, there has been an unusually late abundance of tarpon north of Port Canaveral along the beach. Look for jumping hornbellies (actually a great tarpon bait) or silver mullet schools and the tarpon are often in the area.

Trolling large, shallow-swimming plugs was the ticket for me. If it were calm, I don’t know if this would have worked as well. Because of the tarpon’s rough mouth, use 80lb leader to reduce break-offs. Most fish have been 40-80 pounds, but you still shouldn’t use your redfish rod because it exhausts the fish too much.

There have been a few black drum in the IRL near North Merritt Island, but they have been hard to fool. I hear it’s been pretty good in the farther north and in the Mosquito.

Come on, cool weather! Still waiting on a “REAL” cold front to kick off our Pompano season. I’m like one of my kids patiently waiting for arrival of Christmas morning. It can’t come any sooner! The beach bite has been hit or miss over the past two weeks. Most keeper fish — whiting, Pompano, drum and redfish — have been caught on Fish Bites or Live/blanched fleas. The evening bite has tended to be a little bit better at the moment, but it changes all the time. Tide change can help with the bite as well, so putting in time at your local beach fishing both tides and in between is only going to help you in the future!

I prefer fishing the hour before, of, and after high tide but every beach is different, so looking and studying the beaches for out flows, birds working the fleas and any parts and pieces in the tide line are evidence that fish have been feeding in that area. Accruing this knowledge will only make you a better surf angler!

I’ll be hosting a Surf Fishing seminar in New Symrna beach at the Boater’s Exchange location this Tuesday from 6-7pm. If you’re in the area stop by! And if you’re interested in booking a charter visit my Facebook page and click “Book Now.” I’ll see you there!

Had a great week with some inshore fishing as well as fishing the inlet. Inshore trout bite has been great from Melbourne between the Eau Gallie and Melbourne Causeways for Trout and some redfish. Fishing soft plastics has been the key with 4″ jerk baits from Storm providing the best results. The bite in Grant to Sebastian has been good as well with plenty of trout in the slot and over the 20″ slot limit as well on soft plastic jerk baits and paddle tails.

The Bonnethead Sharks have been thick in numbers around the spoil islands and they are hungry. We have caught a bunch of Bonnetheads on live shrimp the last week. The Pompano are active in the lagoon from Grant down to Sebastian and Vero Beach. Fishing the spoil islands with, Shrimp imitation baits as well as small jerk baits and Goofy jigs are working around drop offs and the flats that typically hold pompano.

The bite in Sebastian inlet has been good with plenty of redfish and snook around with some jacks and a few permit mixed in. Incoming bite has been mostly snook on pigfish and live shrimp fished from the jetty. Redfish, jacks Snook and permit on outgoing tide with live pinfish and pigfish accounting for most of the fish. Live shrimp are getting a few Snook and Permit as well on outgoing tide.

My brother Darren was in town this past week so we decided to hit the surf here in Satellite Beach for some late afternoon fishing. My youngest son Dylan joined us as well. He is a fishing fool and I love every minute of it! I have noticed mornings and evenings seem to be the most productive time lately. We only had a couple of hours of daylight to work with. Before going, we visited Man Overboard Bait & Tackle to pick up some live sand fleas. We had a nice collection of baits with us which consisted of Native Salt Clams, frozen shrimp, Fishbites and live fleas. For tackle we were using a Pompano Rigg’s by Couture set up with white floats and a 4 ounce pyramid sinker.

We started off with Daren using white and I had chartreuse but quickly realized the white was getting bit 4 to 1 easy so I switched up as well. As soon as we hit the beach, I noticed sand fleas everywhere and we timed the incoming tide perfectly. My son was catching some real monster sand fleas. These things had to be an inch to 1.5 inches in size. We had some success catching whiting and margates using Native Salt Clams. Everything else seemed to be feeding on the live fleas. Probably because there were so many of them in the surf. We also realized pretty quickly that the fish were feeding in the first trough, taking advantage of the rising tide. For the next two hours we managed to get a surf fishing slam: pompano, black drum and redfish, with some whiting and margates mixed in. What an awesome evening surf fishing with family!

November is the kick off to prime time Winter bottom fishing. In my opinion we really only have 2 seasons here on the Central East Coast. Flip Flop Season and Flip Flops with Socks Season for those of us still stuck in the 80s. As we start to think about wearing socks the Ocean Obsession Crew gets their mind set on going deep. We have added a extra hour to our Wednesday full day trips until grouper close in January to allow us the option to go deeper on days the current isn’t bad.

We will start to see good action on the bottom from groupers, amberjacks and even cobia on the 120 ft to 180 ft bottom. We will also have fantastic stringer fish fishing for vermillion snapper, porgies, trigger fish and lane snapper. One great advantage we have is numbers. No I don’t mean hot fishing spots however we do have those also. The boat is typically not crowded during off season but we do have more baits in the water than small boats and that allows us to weed through red snapper, giving the groupers a shot at the baits. All this bait and commotion gets the groupers and everything else fired up.

Those that put in the time to get big live baits such as pin fish, blue runners, croakers and even grunts will be rewarded with some shots at groupers and amberjacks. When bringing your own equipment be sure to bring the big gear for grouper fishing. At bare minimum you should be using 80 lb test and a 9/0 double strong hook. When grouper fishing big baits we prefer 100 lb test sliding sinker rig with 100 lb fluorocarbon leader attached to a 10/0 double strong hook with locked down drag. I say it’s better to break them off before they break you off. Even though party boat fishing is every man for themselves it is important not to shut off the bite by breaking the fish off. I have seen epic grouper bites shut down by one break off. You will also need the turning power to quickly bring your grouper to the surface because the sandbar sharks will gladly take a free meal.

We will also continue to see black fin tuna and mahi along with cobia swim to the boat on a regular basis so be ready with a pitch rod or if you reserve the back of the boat have a float line working at all times. A 30lb spinning rod capable of holding 250 yards of braid or mono should be sufficient. Your float line rod can also double as your stringer fish and bait rod. Try to jig up a live cigar minnow or sardine for the float line if they are around but a whole dead sardine catches plenty of fish also.

The days when the current is running or we are limited to 100 ft or less by time we can still expect great bottom fishing. As long as we don’t have any large swells from passing hurricanes the main reef will be abundant with mangrove and mutton snapper. The stringer fish, especially the vermilion snapper will be chewing. You can also soak a big live bait and wait because Pelican Flats region is no stranger to very large grey groupers.

The crowds are down and it is a great time of year to party boat fish. Come join us on Wednesdays for our 10 hour trip and see if you have what it takes to turn a Canaveral grouper.

Look at what one of our customers got yesterday. Great catch, all on shrimp!

The fishing continues to be on fire with snook and monster redfish from the Jetty. The bite seems to be the best early morning and at sundown. Live shrimp have been the bait of choice. If you can get the larger shrimp it certainly stacks the deck in your favor. The trout seem to be pretty much everywhere and we are seeing big schools of jacks in the river as well. I am still getting reports of flounder, too, so get out and take a kid fishing and post some pictures!

Fishing for bull reds has still been great at Ponce! Tarpon have been hanging around the inlet on changing tides and the tripletail bite has been hot, hot, hot!

I headed out at 5:00 pm for a night trip offshore out of Sebastian Inlet. Accompanied by Native Salt Clam Bait pro staff angler, Capt. Jesse Austin, we were hoping to catch a bunch of snapper and were looking to pull other species like blackfin and cobia off any available shrimp boats. The other goal was to fish with the entire variety of Native Salt Baits, including salted clam chum, to really put these products to the test.

The fishing adventure was killer and we achieved all the goals we sought out for, and some. The snapper were chewing our bait like crazy, but we did get beat a few times with out light tackle. The water clarity was good, and there was only minimal current out of the southeast. The bottom was very active, with only minimal small sharks present, and we marked tons of fish.

If you check out Gator 10 7.9 on iHeartRadio you will be able to hear my son Finn and I on The Southern Anglers Radio Show next Saturday the 17th of Nov. between 8 and 10:00 a.m. It’s an interesting show with some good old boys and a lot of cool info, so check it out!

Get clammy, Get fishy!

This was a much better week than last! The Kingfish were finally chewing and we saw some decent size fish. No live bait again, but as usual the frozen minnows worked just fine. The kings varied in size each day but everyone had a blast. Mixed in with the kings were several mahi and cobia as well. Using the basic treble hooked stinger rigs worked out just fine. the local top spot reefs had all the fish. No secrets here. We didn’t waste time pulling all the ballyhoo mahi gear. We did just as good if not better than some that dedicated the day to the deep trolling all day.

Bottom fishing was very good for chicken rigging. Triggerfish, Seabass, Lanes and bee liners worked out well. Some larger fish like grouper and big reds were chewing well too. If deep wasn’t good that try the beach for Spanish macks and big red drum.

Good luck from Fired Up Charters.

Want to look good while you fish? Check out the sweet new shirts we just got in.

In the surf, the red tide is finally gone! With the departure of toxic algae, there’s a great bite for whiting, pompano, drum, sheepshead, bluefish, and mackerel. In the lagoon and river, fishing has been steady with bait and trout, jacks, reds, snook, tarpon, sheepshead, pompano, drum, mackerel, and bluefish.

At Sebastian Inlet, the snook bite has really turned on. You know it’s winter when they prefer shrimp and they have really been chewing on shrimp! The jig bite has been good at night, as well. Mackerel, blues, ladies, and jacks are super fun to catch on light tackle with a small spoon kastmaster or gotcha plug. The black drum are starting to show up which is another sign of the seasons changing. Clams, shrimp, or sand fleas work well for them. Pompano are not showing up in crazy numbers, but they are here. Also small permit, redfish, lookdowns, catfish (can’t lie), sharks, sting rays, Goliath groupers, and tarpon.

Nearshore not too far off the beach, some random Cobia are showing up. Don’t forget to stop and look for tripletail!

Just get out side and fish!