Winter snook

I’ve been doing a lot of snook fishing the past couple of weeks with good results.(46 snook since 1/1/11) Fishing the bridges in Jupiter I have been able to catch snook on all tidal conditions. The majority of the fish have come late night, with the most active feeding coming pre-cold front and the nights when the air temperature starts warming up. With the exception of a couple of fish, all of these snook have come from the bottom, barely moving a DOA Cal across the bottom. Most of the snook have come on the new penny color with a 1/4 in. white jig head, however there are certain nights where a red jig head works better and there are certain nights where the snook prefer a different color body. If one combination of colors isn’t working I will start changing things around untill I found the right combination….trust me at some point you will find the right combo it just takes a lot of experimenting on certain nights. There was one night I caught six snook on all different color combinations, long night but sometimes it can be worth the effort when you finally jump a big fish after a couple hours of “work”.

Surprise Trout

My friend Matt and I headed out on the Loxahatchee this morning in search of some pompano. We saw a good size pompano skip inthe wake around the South fork of the river and decided to get to work. Early on Matt caught a beautiful trout on a pink and white goofy jig, which we promptly released. After we worked the sandbar a little longer with no pompano we headed back towards the spillway and saw a few more pomps skipping but could not get them to eat. I did foul hook a small pompano near the first bridge.
With only a few hours left to fish we worked the North fork and picked up a lot of ladyfish and one keeper pompano. There are definitely pompano scattered in the river its just a matter of being there when they are eating. Most of the fish we caught today came from yellow and white goofy jigs.

Spillway Snook

I love the smell of snook in the morning

I’ve been hitting the spillway a lot the past couple weeks, with the exception of a snook that threw the hook Sunday night, I wasn’t getting much “snookie nookie”. Today was a different story, I started out early this morning with probably a slot size snook that took 4 nice runs before chewing through my 20 lb leader. I have been using lighter leader to try to draw more strikes from the winter snook. Not much longer and I had another snook on the line which I landed…smaller fish, but at this point I’ll take anything I can get.  Later in the afternoon I headed back to see if I could catch more snook, and I did. Caught 3 more small snook, these fish all came from the same spot, damn near one after another. After that bite slowed down I moved to the other side and caught another small snook. So far this year there has only been one artificial lure that I have hooked any snook on…and I have used just about everything else in my tackle box with no results.

Also worth mentioning, there was a small tarpon that rolled on topwater plug around mid-day.

Spillway snook/ Pompano beach walk

Headed to the spillway last night to try a little snook fishing before this front pushed through. I jumped a decent snook early on a red and white terroreyez close to the bottom. I spent another couple of hours throwing different jigs and some plugs with no luck, it seems that when its quiet back there, the first fish to get hooked and make noise is usually the last.

This morning myself and a couple guys walked the Hobe Sound Refuge throwing jigs and spoons…not much going on close to shore, a couple small jacks were caught but we didn’t get any pompano. Early in the morning I watched a nice pompano taken on a sand flea, I expected to see the surf rods start to go off after that first fish but it never happened. There were plenty of spinner sharks jumping around Pec’s Lake, which means its time to start fishing the Jupiter Inlet with some jack steaks. Until next time…

Snook on the brain

Picked up about 3 1/2 large pilchards and greenies in a secret location and headed to Caito’s Bridge to see if I could get one of these slobs cruising the flats to eat.  I started out the secound half of the incoming tide wading on to the sandbar and drifting the pilchards under the bridge, the whole time chumming a few livies to try and get them in a frenzie.  I tried this for a couple hours, and although I had a few snook, one in the 30 lb range, come within a few feet of me, I was unable to get any action.  Now I am trying my luck “clicker fishing” with a live mullet….I will update if I have any hits this way.

Hey Ladies

Hey everyone, don’t have much time so let’s get down to it. I fished the Jupiter Spillway a couple times this weekend, there is a lot of bait hanging around, mullet, ladyfish, and perch. I threw everything in my tackle box, but the thing that worked the best was the Terroreyez. I was able to pick up two small snook, but the majority of the rod bending came from ladyfish and jacks. There were a few 24″ plus snook hanging out around the shore but I was unable to get them to hit.

I didn’t do much pompano fishing this weekend however I heard they were catching a lot in Hobe Sound on the beaches on the 4th, the next day however they had moved.

Pompano fishing 12/31

We got a late start Friday but my friend Matt took me and Chris out to see if we could find some pompano.  We blind casted some of the bars in the Loxahatchee with no luck.  We were able to pick up some small jacks around the bridges and seawalls.  On a side note I did see a large snook cruise off of one of the seawalls, fortunately we did not see any snook killed from the last cold front.  Until next time….