FISHING REPORT: Inlets remain ground zero for action

The St. Johns River and area lakes

Shrimping continues to slowly pick up. The shrimp run into the Mayport Inlet in surges. Smaller shrimp come in, head south in the St. Johns and grow up along the way.

That is apparently what's happening this week. The medium shrimp being caught around Palatka are now small again — and the larger specimens are being caught down around Welaka.

This will continue through October if no big tropical storms squat over the area.

Bass fishing is OK, but you'd be wise to castnet some river shrimp for bait. The bass key on this one forage and pretty much turn their noses up at anything else.

Speckled perch are still being caught by the spider-riggers in deeper water, but are not in the lily pads.

Bluegill, shellcracker and other panfish are a good bet, but they're spread out and some sort of chum, whether hog food or gar roe, really helps to stack them up.

There's been a decent bite of stripers at the mouth of the Ocklawaha River and,reportedly down around the Croaker Hole in the river outside Lake George.

The Intracoastal Waterway

It's been tough fishing for most of the guides all week, due mainly to the wind and extra high water. That will only get worse as the weekend nears. But if you can take the wind, some of the guides are predicting this weekend to be phenomenal fishing the extra high water up in the spartina grasses ... but you have to get there and big northerly winds will make that uncomfortable.

Flounder fishing is picking up, but most of the better fish have been taken under bridge pilings in 15 to 20 feet of water. Captain Scott Shank cleaned 11 on a trip earlier in the week — and Scott won't keep them unless they're at least 14 inches ... to his credit.

There's some confusion regarding new flounder regulations. Some guides and likely anglers have heard the new regulations are in place. That is not the case. The FWC expects to tweak some regs at its October meeting and set a starting date. As it stands now the regulations would do much to protect a species clearly in decline — at least around here.

The new rules would raise the minimum size limit from 12 to 14 inches, reduce recreational bag limits from (a ridiculous) 10 fish to five per angler per day. It would close all recreational flounder catches and strictly limit commercial catches during the month of November. This is when the bulk of the females go offshore to spawn. These may spawn several times during that time, laying up to 100,000 eggs each time. One of the lesser known but more important possible rules would be to carry all FWC limits out of state waters and into federal waters (past 3 miles). This would greatly reduce the practice of diving to stick these big breeding females out on the reefs and wrecks, giving more of them the opportunity to spawn and put back what we take away - to the detriment of both.

Redfish are scattered except in the inlets here and down at Matanzas. The word is the best time for catching them is around the slack high tides in both inlets. Part of that may just be you can keep a bait down with the slower water. But there are scads of jumbo redfish staging up in the inlets to waylay the tons of mullet coming in and going out.

Mangrove snapper fishing is very good and the fish continue to get biggers, though it's still about half-and-half legal fish — which is 10 inches and above.

The Atlantic

A few boats made it out to deeper water and were catching muttons, pinks, redeyes, amberjack and the occasional legal cobia and African pompano.

And I've gotten no reports from the local reefs and wrecks this week, though it's a good bet the kingfish are stacked up if you can get out.

Surf fishing has been more hunting than fishing. Always a year or three behind the technological curve, I've started looking at Google Earth maps of the local beaches to look for the secondary bars with good breaks and the better run-outs between them. That should shorten your search considerably.

The weather

if you have any boat projects to get done this would be a good weekend to get on them. The weatherman is calling for northeast winds Saturday at 20 to 25 knots and seas of 6 to 9 feet. Sunday it just gets better with 25 to 30 knots and seas inside 20 miles up to 13 feet — worse farther out.

Jim writes a weekly fishing column for The Record. You can reach him with reports, photos, or various exaggerations at creekratstaug@gmail.com.