The Spotted Sea Trout are still biting down in Sarasota, Florida. I am catching on the patterns pictured as well as white and hot green. I recommend folks try regular soft plastics this season for fluke to save money on Gulp. Seems like we went from bait directly to Gulp in NJ and never gave regular soft baits a serious try. They can save you a bunch of bucks and are definitely not as messy / smelly as Gulp. Worth a try!

Caesar Pesarini was down at Longboat Key near Sarasota for a few weeks of sun and fun this winter. He did find time to do some fishing and caught a nice Mangrove Snapper and Black Seabass. The beach photo shows him with a Bonnet shark – a relative of the hammerhead.

On February 14, Ken, another NJ fisherman, and I had the best day we ever had down here in Sarasota. We lost count of the number of trout we caught in the thick fog in Sarasota Bay. We also caught and brought home 4 Spanish Mackerel. The fish were caught mostly on soft plastic jigs but several trout and Spanish were caught on Mirror Lure suspending plugs. We were fishing grass flats near an inlet. Reminded me of the time weakfish were plentiful in NJ. These trout love similar patterns to those we used on weakfish back in the days.

There is still a moratorium on keeping trout but there seems to be more trout around now than before the red tide invasion last year. January and most of February were very slow fishing due to cold weather and wind but the recent warm temperatures have turned the fish on.

My daughter and two of her three boys came down for a short visit to warmer Florida. Both boys wanted to do a little fishing so I took them to a dock on a feeder to Jupiter inlet where I had success on two prior trips catching mangrove snappers, croakers and a catfish. The boys had fun catching small snappers which despite our best efforts often became meals for the pelicans. But we did get two nice keepers. Jacoby is holding a very nice Snapper and Braddock has a very impressive Sheepshead! The second picture shows our breakfast the following morning. The Sheepshead is the four pieces on the bottom.

My wife and I arrived in Florida on January 3rd and although the weather has been warm, the winds have been fierce blowing 20 – 30 mph. When they dropped below 20, I decided to do a trip on a local party boat – The Blue Heron – an 85′ boat making two 4 hour trips each day for $50.

Since they drift over a reef, fishing is done on one side only. Our trip had 13 anglers – one more than the 12 minimum required. Despite the small number of anglers, tangles and snags were common. Fortunately, the mates and the captain immediately undid tangles, tied on weights and hooks, rebaited with a sardine and unhooked your catch. I’m not used to that kind of service!

Overall, the catch was decent with almost everyone taking home some fillets. Along with several shorts, I had the three keeper snappers in the photo. That’s a mangrove snapper on the bottom, a yellowtail in the middle and a vermillion snapper on top. Especially exciting was the appearance of several 8′ reef sharks swimming alongside the boat and taking their share of the catch!

For our last trip of 2019, Bill Dabney, Dave Spendiff, Alan Goracy and I booked an afternoon tog / striper trip on Captain Brett Taylor’s Reel Reaction charters. Weather conditions were great despite several days of blowout tides, very strong winds and rain. Our plan was to hit the blackfish first and then look for birds for some stripers.
We started out on the Barnegat reef and after fishing several spots with just a few shorts and keepers, the dreaded feeling that this was going to be a slow day was on all our minds. Fortunately, Brett’s boat has a trolling motor that makes it real easy to move on a wreck or go to a new one.

After several spots without any better catching, Brett decided to move south to the Garden State North reef and see if the action was better there. Unfortunately that was not the case. Fish were small, not in a feeding mood and tough to hook! Since the waves were light, late in the trip we decided to try using tog jigs that are now very popular. None of us had ever fished with them and it does take some adjustment but immediately we were getting more frequent hits. I am absolutely sold on them if conditions permit using lighter weights.

Despite Brett keeping us out a few hours longer, white legger crabs and use of the jigs, we ended up with 8 hard earned keepers. The high point for me was a personal best 11.25 lb tog caught on the jig. We stayed so long on the reef that we had no time left for stripers.

Not for any lack of trying, but last week was tough for me and several club members as we tried to get in on the striper action.
Monday 11/11 started with a charter Bill Dabney arranged on Steve Purul’s Reel Fantasea. Joining Bill was Dave Spendiff, Greg Camilleri and me. During our 6 hour charter, we tried trolling, plugging, jigging and live spot from the inlet to Seaside Park, the North jetty, Oyster Creek and the sod banks. Total take – Gregg got a slot fish on a plug outside the inlet and Dave, Bill and I had shorts on spot and Storm minnow jigs near the sod banks. Steve tried everything and even took us back out for an additional hour after his afternoon charter was a no show.

Thursday 11/14 Dave Spendiff, Alan Goracy and I went out on my boat “Set the Hook” and we did everything but set the hook! Once again, we trolled, plugged and drifted spot! Ultimately more than a dozen spot were released to fend for themselves. Beautiful day but no birds and no fish!

On Friday, Phil Simon had a charter on Brett Taylor’s Reel Reaction. Due to a cancellation by one of his group, Phil called me Thursday evening and I joined Phil and his neighbor Dan Ludwig for an afternoon tog / striper trip. We arrived at the dock to see Brett’s earlier trip come in with 2 tog and 6 stripers including a 20 lb beauty. They said they caught over 50 fish and had great conditions. Unfortunately, our afternoon trip was much tougher as the fish were scattered. We got our limit of 4 Tog 1st, and then played run and gun for Stripers. We kept one tagged fish, and released a few in the 20-22 inch range. Bird play was pretty scattered and fish were feeding on small sand eels. That’s Dan with a nice tog and a photo of Sue Simon’s Blackened Tog.

All three trips last week had fantastic conditions as far as weather, wind and waves. Oh well, will try again before the season is over.

I am happy to report that the Florida fish are back after last year’s red tide fish kill! Everyone thought it would take 3 years to replenish the stock but the fish proved them wrong.  We caught over 20 Spotted Sea Trout and 8 Spanish Mackerel yesterday in the bay near Sarasota. One Trout didn’t quite make it onboard after a Spanish bit it in half!

There is still a moratorium on trout, snook and redfish so everything went back. All fish were caught on Gulp. I even caught a couple of short grouper hopping on a 4 inch new penny shrimp bounced across the bottom.

Mitch Knable and George Guerin fished on Wednesday November 6th. We had lots of marks on the three mile line just south of seaside. Unfortunately, we only had one taker but it was a beauty! The striper went 32 lbs and was caught on a green bunker spoon.

Had a crew of 5 out on October 25th aboard the Jen-Jen including Brian, Tyler, fellow junior member Ryan Mollicone and Jimbo. Thought we were going to kill the bass off Seaside! 5 minutes into the troll, we caught this 25lber but then nothing after 4 more hours. We decided to hookup on a wreck and limited with tog and 1 trigger. Great day and hopefully the weather will cooperate for future trips.

Fished Tuesday September 10th on Little Egg Reef and managed to catch three keepers with the biggest 21 1/2″. Went out again on Thursday the 12th with a fishing buddy. We headed for the Garden State South and hit a couple of wrecks before the reef. I pulled up a 6.5 pounder and then proceeded to GSS. We caught three more keeper flounder and quite a few nice sea bass which if the season was open would have been in the cooler. In all, it was a good fishing day until the wind kicked up all of a sudden early afternoon. It’s been a slow pick on the flounder since the storm and I don’t know for sure if they just stop biting or if they started moving out. 

Good luck to everybody on this last week of flounder fishing!

My son Kyle and his family were up from Maryland and we squeezed in a morning of blowfish fishing last Friday. They forgot to bring the child life jackets, so we draped adult jackets on the girls and headed for Barnegat bay north of the BI buoy, anchored up, put the chum pot over the side and started catching blowfish. The girls, ages 6 ½ & 4 ½, had a ball cranking in the fish and putting the “balloon fish” in the live well. We only spent an hour and a half fishing before heading back. In addition to blowfish, we caught fluke, sea bass and porgies.

The eating may have been the best part of all!

Little egg reef is starting to produce some nice fish. I was there on Saturday by myself and got my three fish limit. On Sunday I had a fishing partner and we started at the red Tower. We caught 2 keepers but then the drifts died down. We picked up and went to LE Reef and got four more keepers. I had the largest fish at 25 1/2 weighing 6 1/2 pounds! We also caught 2 keeper sea bass and many shorts. We did a lot of catching Sunday and several reports from friends of mine also had some good catches on the reef with a few big fish.

I went out to fish the outgoing tide in Great Bay around 1:00 PM after working on my boat at the marina in the morning. After two drifts, I hooked into a keeper fluke and the Chinese Fire Drill started with my pole in one hand and the net in the other hand. After several tries and a number of salty curses, I netted a nice 20 in. fish. I also hooked another good fish but lost it along with several shorts. During the afternoon several boats passed around me going to unknown destinations as I continued to drift and catch fish.

In the last Leary report from Saturday August 10th off Barnegat Reef titled, “Improved Fishing at the Northern Reefs”, the day ended on a sour note. During the return trip home before reaching the inlet, they struck something which damaged the lower unit and shut the motor down. As a result, they required a 3 hour tow from Boat US. Without tow insurance, that alone would have been over $1000!! Larry said they should be back on water by next weekend and thankfully there were no injuries.

On a brighter note, Brendan & Tyler weren’t going to sit around and loose any fishing days so they went out on the Carolyn Ann III on Friday. From the photo, they caught two very nice keepers. Congratulations to Brendan as he had the pool winner!

Haven’t had much to report on lately as the flounder fishing hasn’t been that good. However, today we seem to have hit the mother load! We got our limit of nine fish from 19 to 251/2 inches with the largest which I caught weighing 6 lb. It was early so we continued fishing and released a load of shorts plus four fish that were 18 to 20 inches. Fish were still biting when we left to return back to the dock about 2:00 PM!

Looks like things are improving on the fishing front. Brian took Tyler, Carter and friend Ryan north this morning. They had 4 keepers and a bunch of shorts.Tyler & Ryan proudly display their keepers in the photo. Tyler is also shown holding the largest fish – his 5-1/2 lb fluke caught on Gulp.
In addition, they had 10 cocktail blues, 3 Spanish Mackerel, a Chub Mackerel and a rudder fish. Nice variety of fish today but nothing was weighed in. Tyler said there will be bigger ones later this month. Hope he’s right.