Amelia Island Fishing Blog

A bit chilly this morning, so we waited until noon to go fishing, which was about an hour before high tide. When the sun got up, it warmed up a bit and the wind died down. I went fishing with a friend, Chuck, who is staying in the campground at the park.

Nothing for the cooler today, but we kept busy. We caught about six small blues (all undersized), a couple very small Whiting, and Chuck got a nice sharp nose shark about three feet long. Good news was the flounder were biting, bad news they were the Japanese variety (skates). We caught two big skates that filled up the 36" net, and a batch of smaller ones.

We fished both ends of the pier - the beach end was littered with crabs, so we couldn't keep a bait in the water very long. No crabs at all and the other end, and we even saw one nice red fish, about 30 inches long swim by.

The pier was pretty empty today because of the cold weather, but another fisherman reported catching a few flounder.

Day four stuck in the house. We had three days of yucky, cloudy, rainy weather, and now we're topping it off with 30 mph west wind and a nice dive by the thermometer. The temperature is back up to 60 this morning, but the howling wind is enough to keep most fisherman home today. It's been sheer agony sitting here looking at my new surf rod and reel which I spooled up about four days ago and haven't had a chance to try out yet.

So what do you do when you can't go fishing? You go to the store and buy fishing tackle! I made a trip to Wally World last night and did my usual rounds of the fishing tackle department; not that I really needed anything, but you never know what kind of new stuff they may have gotten in since my last trip.

I was amazed to find - a sand flea rake! Never seen them in Walmart before, and I've been looking around on the net for one, so I grabbed one. For the amazingly low price of fourteen bucks. Not your heavy duty commercial model, but looks like it'll work. I also picked up a crab trap, the star type that looks like an upside down pyramid sinker, and a few other little things. Kept myself busy this evening putting new lines on the new crab trap (they come with what looks like kite string) and replacing the lines on a couple of old crab traps in the garage.

I'm ready for the crabs. If they don't all blow away in the wind. Walmart has two sand flea rakes left, if you hurry you might get lucky and get one....

We took our little sand fleas surf fishing this morning, but they didn't seem to be too enthusiastic about it. Neither were the fish, and I wasn't either because the wind was howling and it was pretty cold.

We fished the outgoing tide from the beach near the Fort Clinch beach campground, but I only stayed a couple hours as I had other things to do today besides fishing. Caught a few small blues on cut mullet, and my friend caught some small whiting on shrimp. The sand fleas didn't attract much attention, but we'll wash them off and give them another try later. Not a Pompano in sight anywhere today...

Another really nice day for November. I arrived at the pier about an hour after high tide, and as soon as I started fishing, the blues started biting. Caught about 15 blues, most in the 12 to 13 inch range. Didn't see or hear of anything else that was caught on the pier today. No mullet on the pier side of the jetty, but the birds were working the water on the south side of the rocks, and probably because the blues were over there cutting up the mullet.

Chuck, one of the guys who has been fishing on the pier for the last couple weeks is staying in the camp ground in the park near the beach, and he's been using sand fleas for bait. After the blues stopped biting we decided to take a trip down the island to look for sand fleas and to give me a proper education on finding and storing them. We found a couple dozen big ones, so tomorrow morning we're going to give our new found pets some surf fishing lessons....

My wife had mentioned to a friend who had never tried Bluefish that she liked to eat the small ones, so I got an order to go catch a test batch. Since high tide was just about sunrise, I decided to try the surf on the north end of the island first, as it's been a while since I fished there. Very pretty sunrise and a few other fishermen were out early on the beach.

An hour of fishing proved to be unproductive - I caught one small sharp nose shark, and one big pelican who fortunately managed to get himself untangled after he flew into the line, saving me the agony of cranking him up to the beach and doing if for him. Birds were working on the bait fish, but way out past casting range and the blues weren't eating, so I headed back home to try again later.

After lunch I tried Public Access 19 (low tide) which is another spot I haven't fished for quite a while. An hour of fishing again proved unproductive; I hooked what felt like a small blue but I never got him to the beach. So I decided to go home and switch the surf tackle for some light pier stuff and try again elsewhere.

I stopped at the Fernandina Boat Ramp, but the water was so nasty looking (very muddy) that I fished for ten minutes and decided to leave and try the Fort Clinch pier. It was getting to be late afternoon with an incoming tide, and I hoped the mullet might show up at the pier. The mullet didn't, but the Bluefish did. I fished for about an hour, close to the beach, and caught about 18 small blues. They were biting so good that I caught two at a time several casts. Five went into the cooler for the Bluefish sampler, and the others went back to grow up really big and go back up north. I don't know why the big blues aren't in Florida; 15 pounders are common up north, but 15 inchers are rare down here. Oh well, the small ones are better to eat anyway, and I had a lot of fun catching them on a light weight six foot rod.

A nice sunset complimented the earlier sunrise at the beach, and completed my round-the-island fishing tour looking for Bluefish, which I finally found.