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The Ides of March are upon us. Well, I don't even know what that really means except the year is flying by and March is here again. This year has been a particularly warm winter, even for NE Florida standards. Living on the Northside near the airport I can only remember a couple days of scraping windshields, ok maybe four or five but that is awesome for the fishing.
I haven’t gotten as much opportunity to get out as I would like too, but all that changed Presidents Day weekend. I’m fortunate enough to have a father who is a great; scratch that, awesome boat mechanic and I just got my flats boat overhauled with a new power pole and a couple of other things.
Then not only did he complete everything for me, he surprised delivered it back to me in time for a holiday weekend of fishing. THANKS TO HIM AND ALL THE DADS OUT THERE WHO TEACH YOUR KIDS TO FISH!
We started out the weekend with a little bit of planning, these crazy weather days with the wind having a small flats boat you don’t want to get beat all up so we were happy to see some lulls in the wind.
The tide was low in the morning, meaning the sun would have time to heat up the shallow water and the fish should ride the water into the warm water of the flats. Pretty basic stuff just to get out and have fun for a few hours. Our first day was just that after launching on the Northside we worked a few creeks along the river and I noticed that yes, the bait was there. Even nice sized finger mullet… but the fish weren’t interested.
I thought since it had been a little cold, they would be in the creeks early at low tide. I was wrong. I finally decided to hit the grass edges along one of the numerous Jacksonville flats and we had some great luck just tossing artificial baits along the shoreline, even as the wind picked up to above 15 knots.
I was totally happy. My objective was completed about 5 hours into the trip as Dad finished up his SLAM with a 16” trout to go with his 22” Red and a fat 17” flounder. On the other hand I snagged a 3.5” finger mullet with topwater, a 26 inch Red, and a small trout later on with a gulp shrimp under a popping cork while tirelessly searching for a school of trout. All so dad could finish his slam. His slam was on a slayer jig head and a white gulp swimming mullet.
The next day finished the weekend with some feisty hand-picked fiddlers from Matt at Browns Fish Camp and went out for three hours Monday in a quest for sheepshead and I’m glad to report we nailed two really nice ones!
Well, until next time… tight lines and hope you have a wonderful March!!
Chappy
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