Working with the Fronts

This time of the year you can expect two things, the weather man fell on his head and cant get it right and there are good fishing days and days to get honey dooos done. Each week is plagued with three to four days of fronts moving through and a couple days of calm weather. It's these calm days that you need to GO FISHIN and the crummy days to get all of your chores done.

Trout are still fired up with numbers on good days of fifty plus fish and bad days of fifteen plus fish. Some days you are having to cull through the fish to come up with a few keepers and other days all are nice two to three pounders. Figure that out? I have had my best success using a Sea Striker four inch trout grub, white body with a green tail, fished on a 1/4 ounce lead jig. Fish this from the edge to the boat, Slooooow. Look for deep drops or some sort of structure on the bottom. If you have a good color recorder, you will be able to see little pieces that could very well hold big numbers of trout. If you find an area like this, work all around it and you might find a fish or two hanging out away from the structure. The old style conventional trout float rig is also a good way to get a few this time of the year if you can stand the nuisance fish.

Reds are pretty much all huddled up when the water gets real cold and this could make them easy to find but hard to catch. Try fishing them when the lower part of the tide is in the mid to late after noon. This gives the sun a chance to warm up the flats and this little change in water temperature can make a large difference in them wanting to eat or ignoring your bait. use a small bait like a shrimp or mud minnow or a small spoon or soft plastic. Remember, they are cold and will not usually chase a bait, so be patient. All of this slow presentation fishing could reward you with some nice catches when your buddies come back empty handed.

We are staring to get a few drum and I expect the bite to pick up a little this month. I like a fresh shrimp, a clam or a piece of crab fished on the bottom. Try a carolina rig with a Daiichi 5/0 Circle Wide hook. Put out as many rods as you can and leave them in the rod holder until they double over. This is a good way to fish more than one pole and still catch fish.

Good numbers of whiting should show up in the surf this month. There is no better bait than a fresh sand flea but you can also have good success with a small piece of fresh shrimp or one of my favorites is a small piece of squid tentacle slid on the hook like you would fish an earthworm. My rig would consist of a #1 Circle Wide hook and a Sputnik weight. I tied the weight to the bottom then about two to four dropper loops in the line and slide the hook on each loop. The more hooks the more fish and the more baiting you have to do. In addition to the surf, these tasty little fish move into the ICW and the inlets. Don't shrug these off as no good, they are one of the best eating fish out there and they pull hard for their size. This is a great fish to catch with your kids.

The offshore bite is as it should be with big numbers of seabass and more king mackerel than you could imagine. Last week John Harrison had fifty king mackerel on a trip out to 110 feet of water. He was dragging dead cigar minnows at around five knots. He said, you could have used any bait and done good. Fish were sky rocketing all around his boat and striking anything in the water. Wish I had been there to see that. Many years ago, Larry Beutlick and I were offshore and in the distance I could see what appeared to be small missiles shooting from the water upward. We headed in that direction and it was king mackerel sky rocketing twenty feet in the air. Not just a couple but say about twenty plus fish, all shooting up like they were fired from a missile launching device under the water. It was one of the neatest thing that have ever seen. We trolled around these missiles and caught a box full in no time. There were times that fish would sky rocket right next to the boat. We kept asking each other, what if one jumped in the boat and we both decided that we did not want to find out.

Grouper and snapper are both doing real well with big numbers for the anglers that can get these bad boys to the boat. I am also hearing very good catches of some monster three pound vermillion snappers. I like to use a number one Daiichi Circle Wide with a small piece of cutbait. I like to have three to four hook tied to the line about six to ten inches apart. Using this rig, you sometimes mess up and end up with a fish on each hook.

Flounder in the ocean are stacked up like cord wood. Look for a wreck from six to ten miles out. Get off to the side of the wreck and fish in the sand. Use a live mullet on a carolina rig with a leader about two feet long. The bite is going to be just like fishing for them in the creeks and river. Wait for the heavy feeling and crank him up. I went the other day and we had fifteen that weighed between four and ten pounds. Not bad for winter time flounder fishing.