Captain Bob Bushholz
Jensen Beach, Florida
(772) 225-6436
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ALL YEAR LONG!!!!' | | Fishing Report for
January 21st, 2004
"Heating Up"
Inshore fishing along the Treasure Coast
during he past few weeks has been awesome! The majority of the fish have
been sitting in deeper water. Area bridges, including the 25-cent and
10-cent are holding lots of black drum (3-6 lbs.) along with big croakers
over 3 lbs. Other species include mangrove snapper, sheephead, goliath
grouper with a few snook and mackerel mixed in. Shrimp and trollrites on
the bottom have been working great. To increase your odds, use nothing
bigger than a 2/0 hook and break the shrimp in half, using a 1” piece.
There are lots of bait stealers down deep like sheephead and snapper that
will simply pull off a larger frozen or live shrimp. The drum like to run
with the bait and not really “whack” it. So, if you feel the line
pulling slowly, stick it to him and set the hook. All the goliath grouper
have been under 10 lbs. but lots of fun (since they are catch and release
only).
Moving into the St. Lucie Inlet area, there have been lots of fish,
both inside and outside of the rocks. We’ve been bouncing jigs tipped
with shrimp and getting some nice sheephead to 4 lbs. with an assortment
of jacks, blue runners, mackerel, grunts, black margate and snapper
rounding out the catch. It’s not uncommon to catch scorpion fish here,
so be careful! If you are not sure what you have on the end of the line,
DO NOT TOUCH!!! Just cut the line as close to the fish as you can without
risk of injury.
Peck’s Lake is a madhouse with hundreds of boats banging on the
mackerel. Last week we ran to Peck’s and fished among the masses. It’s
not bad enough that you have 200 boats packed into a small area with some
casting and some netting, but now there are a half dozen boats that
decided this is a good place to troll. These trollers are zig-zagging in
between everyone. It’s quite a show! This year I haven’t really seen
the glass minnow schools being assaulted by both macks and birds. When the
bait thickens (usually in February) it’s easy to just search for diving
birds that are feasting on the bait being pushed to the surface by
mackerel.
Inside, around the crossroads, plenty of boats have been anchored up
waiting for the pompano run. Looks like most of the boats are using surf
rigs (double and triple kayle hooks) with sand fleas. There are lots of
boats here but I haven’t seen them pulling in many fish. Maybe it’s a
short half-hour bite that everyone is just waiting for. It’s hard to
tell because if I don’t see bent rods while I am cruising past, I just
keep on moving. Most of the pompano we have caught lately have been in the
Sailfish Flats. Even Hell’s Gate has been slow for pomps.
The trout action in the grass flats north of Jensen Causeway has
slowed down. I haven’t targeted trout much this year except for hitting
a few spoil islands. I know a few seniors that I have breakfast with, who
wade every morning then give me their reports. One gent named Sonny, who
is a real trout and snook slayer and uses mainly split-tail grubs, says
the past few weeks have been slow (even for the “fish slayer”). I
normally start fishing the grass around March, along with channel markers.
Catch 22 ended up 2003 with 105 tripletail, so we are increasing the goal
for 2004 to 122!!!
Heading down to the Keys second week in February for a 3 day trip to
the Dry Tortugas aboard the Yankee Capts. Hopefully the weather will
cooperate and bang on some mutton snapper and grouper. Will post results
of the trip when I return.
Tight lines everyone and take a kid fishing.
Capt. Bob Bushholz
(772) 225-6436
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