Ponce Inlet and Port Canaveral Fishing Report
You know, if you’re gone from your home for three months, when you get home you might have some work to do. Yard work, painting, a new garage door opener, and more, all lots of fun. I’m not complaining. Really. ‘Cause now my garage door works and my wife is happy with her newly redone kitchen. Happy wife…
In spite of all the fun around the house, I managed to get out a few days this week. On Tuesday Scott Radloff and I launched the Mitzi near the north causeway in New Smyrna Beach. When we got to Ponce Inlet there were lots of ladyfish busting over the shoals (it was high tide) inside the inlet. We caught four and kept them for future reference. This time of year a ladyfish or two can come in real handy sometimes.
There were giant balls of glass minnows in the inlet. Nothing was molesting them that we could see.
There were birds diving all over the place outside the inlet, along with a couple of shrimp boats. There were very few fish under the birds, which I thought odd. We checked the shrimp boats. One was not under way. The other was being followed by troops of dolphins and phalanxes of sharks. We wanted to find tarpon, so we left the vicinity of the inlet and ran south down the beach to the beginning of the national seashore. We saw nothing.
We went out to sea and ran back north, to the vicinity of the inlet. Along the way we saw nothing. A couple miles out of the inlet there were diving birds, and breaking tunny under them. It was run-and-gun fishing, and many of the runs were fruitless. However, enough worked that we had a couple tunny doubles, and boated eight or so. I was using a six-weight, quite sporting. Even broke one off. Scott was using a DOA CAL jig, I a craft fur minnow.
The tunny stretch the string…
This is an incredible light tackle fish.
One of the shrimpers was still there, so we hooked a couple of sharks for some savage amusement.
Scott putting the finishing touches on a 50 pound shark.
We fished the length of the north jetty with no meaningful results, then ran through the waves in the inlet and loaded the boat. Great weather, beautiful day.
So we got tunny on our last four trips. Of course if you have a charter and he wants one you can’t get it done. On Thursday fly fisher Dr. Aubrey Thompson of Jacksonville was my guest. We went out of Port Canaveral. Based on the number of fish we caught last Friday I thought it would be a better and certainly a safer bet.
The bait was still there. A lot of the fish were not showing themselves. The ladyfish, jacks, and bluefish were all MIA. We saw quite a few and caught a few Spanish mackerel, using craft fur minnows. We saw very scattered tunny breaking, not that we ever got a good shot at them. We followed weeds for miles, and saw four tripletail, the largest of which might have gone 12 inches. Then a northeast wind freshened and blew us off the water. The whole day was about being a minute late and a dollar short. The boat was on the trailer at about 1 PM.
And that is this week’s Ponce Inlet and Port Canaveral Fishing Report.
Life is great and I love my work!
Life is short- Go Fishing!
John Kumiski
http://www.spottedtail.com
All content in this blog, including writing and photos, copyright John Kumiski 2014. All rights are reserved.
Thanks for including me on your distribution of such a good publication.
I hope to have you take me on a charter with my fly rod in the near future.