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Category: Surf Fishing Reports

Jacksonville Beach -  I got down tho the beach around 7:30 AM.  It was high tide and no one else was fishing within sight.  I tossed out a frozen mullet and started to get bites within ten minutes, so I suspected it would be a good day.  The water temperature is back down into the mid seventies, so the bluefish are back.  I caught one bluefish after another and even caught two at once on my double-drop rig.  By 9am I was out of bait and had 8 bluefish in the cooler and had thrown back 4 blues that were too small.  I couldnt find any mullet in the shallow water and I didn't really want to get soaked, so I decided to call it a day.  The Air Show was going to start soon and the water was getting closed to the public at 10am.  So I went home with 8 bluefish pictured above.  It was a beautiful day and I had a blast as usual.  

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Category: Surf Fishing Reports

Jacksonville Beach - I got down to the beach about 7am.  The tide was way out and low tide was expected about 10am.  There was very little surf and light wind.  Conditions were good for casting and visibilty into the water.  I started fishing with shrimp flavored Fish Bites, on which I caught a few small Croakers, which I tossed back.  My neighbor Scott was fishing a little south of me (he probably got to the beach at daylight).  I walked down for a chat and he commented that he was seeing some schools of finger mullet passing through.  I got back to my pole and focused on the water within my net casting range.  After a while a saw some small ripples parting around where my line entered the water.  I ran out into the hip deep water and threw my 6ft cast net.  I caught the tail end of small school of finger sized mullet.  I had about 20 mullet in the net.  I could see that Scott snagged a few as well.  I hooked up a mullet, tossed it out, set my rod in the spike, and got my net ready.  I saw several more schools of ~ 50 to 100 mullet come by and netted what I could.  I didn't get any bites on my line with the mullet.  I did get plenty of bait, which I took home and froze in quart bags for later use.  Although I didn't catch any fish, it was still exciting to see the mullet coming back through.  The mullet run should ramp up for a few more weeks, wiht the schools getting much larger and more frequent.  The predators will come inshore for the mullet soon and the real fun will begin.  I can almost taste the redfish already!!  I had a blast as usual and plan to be back out on the beach Saturday morning.

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Category: Surf Fishing Reports

Jacksonville Beach - Wes and I headed down to the beach at 7:30am, along with some of the neighborhood kids.  We still weren't getting any action on finger mullet.  Everyone was fishing with 'Fish Bites' and we hauled in croakers and spot as fast we could reel them in.  We had fun and did manage to catch a few whiting for the table.  It was a beautiful day and everyone had a blast.  My neighbor Ashton is shown in the picture above with a nice whiting.

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Category: Surf Fishing Reports

Jacksonville Beach - I headed down to the beach at 7:30am with Wes and some neighborhood kids.  Wes started out using finger mullet for bait, the kids and I were using shrimp flavored 'Fish Bites'.  We immediately started getting bites on the Fish Bites.  The kids were catching small croakers, just about as fast as they could reel them in.  Wes was getting no action on the finger mullet, so he switched to Fish Bites after about an hour.  We continued to catch small croakers and Spot for the rest of the morning.  My neigbor Parker , shown in the picture above, was realling in the Spots two at a time.  We had a lot of fun catching the croakers and Spots all morning.  We kept a few of the larger Spot for the frying pan and threw the rest back.   It was low tide, close to noon, and the water was out past the first sand bar.  This leaves a good trough bewtween the first and second sandbar.  I watched a 4.5 ft shark chasing spot, right near the bank.  I could have caught him with my cast net.  It was either a blacktip or bull shark.  I watched him swimming around near the shore for several minutes and some people playing the surf nearby called their kids out of the water. I got my cast net ready when he was heading back my way, but he disappeared before I had a chance to throw it.   We had a blast as usuall!! 

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Category: Surf Fishing Reports

Panama City Beach - As you can probably tell from the picture above.  This is not really a 'surf fishing' report!! Red snapper season just opened in Florida waters so I drove over to Panama City Beach to go out on my brothers boat.  We put in at Andrews State Park in PC Beach.  We got out on the water at about 10:30am.  We had to stay within 9 miles of the coast in order to stay within state waters, since snapper season had not opened yet in federal waters.  We got out to our first spot and immediately  began catching red snapper.  We were using pinfish for bait.  We had good luck at several spots and ended up with some red snapper, white snapper, a grouper and a king mackerel.  It was a lot of fun getting out in the deep water and catching some big fish for a change.  We had a blast.

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Category: Surf Fishing Reports

Jacksonville Beach - I headed down to the beach at 7:30am.  It was a beautiful, warm sunny morning, and some of the neighborhood kids came along again.  We had one rod set out with finger mullet and the rest of us were using shrimp flavored Fish Bites.  I don't think we had a single bite on the finger mullet.  We did have a lot of small bumps on the Fish Bites, which turned out to be small Spot and Croakers.  The kids had a lot of fun catching the Croakers and Spots, all of which got thrown back except for a few of the bigger spot.  My son Wyatt is pictured above with a Croaker he pulled in (with a little help).  We had a blast as usual and ate fried Spot for lunch.

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Category: Surf Fishing Reports

Jacksonville Beach - I headed down to the beach about 7:30am.  Some of the kids from my neighborhood came down as well.  We were fishing with shrimp flavored Fish Bites and frozen finger mullet I put up, back in the fall.  It was a beautiful day, but things were a little slow.  We had a few bites on the fish bites and the finger mullet, but only brought in a couple of catfish.  My neighbor Zach, did manage to catch this beautiful little scalloped hammerhead shark pup.  We catch a lot of bonnet head sharks from the beach here, but this is the first time I've seen a scalloped hammerhead.  We had a blast as usual and after a couple of hours the kids put down their poles and headed out to swim and surf.  

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Category: Surf Fishing Reports

Jacksonville Beach - Wes, Emily and I got down to the beach at about 7:30.  Wes and I brought some frozen finger mullet from my bait freezer and Emily ran by Rick's Bait and Tackle to get some fresh live shrimp.  Wes hooked up some cut mullet while Emily and I gave the live shrimp a try.  It was a beautiful morning and the weather and tide conditions were good.  We had a few bites and Emily and I both landed a top-sail catfish (pictured above), which we threw back.  A bit later I caught a couple of small bonnethead shark pups, which also got tossed back into the surf.  I caught all three fish on shrimp.  I also tried mullet for a while without any success.  Wes ended up with one small whiting, which is all we brought home for the day.  We enjoyed the beautiful morning on the beach anyway.  As always we had a blast.