ST. JOHNS COUNTY FISHING REPORT: Tough going in the ICW
The St. Johns River and area lakes
I kinda cringe writing this after last year, because the speckled perch hexed my efforts to figure out their spawn. But conventional wisdom is that January is the month the females should begin to spawn and that's most likely to occur on the new moon (last night) or the full moon at the end of the month.
There is an alternate method of predicting the spawn and that's looking for Georgia and Alabama license tags in the inland fish camp parking lots.
This week, the action picked up in the lily pads where the females feel most comfortable dropping eggs, but most of the fish were small. That generally means they were the smaller males, fanning beds and generally cleaning up for their girlfriends procreative visits.
There are still scads of specks still being caught out in deeper water by those trolling or drifting minnows.
Dead Lake is generally one of the better spots to find them, and action did pick up there: along with Santa Fe and Crescent. Lochloosa is still slow, and that's odd because it's generally one of the first of the larger lakes to get going.
Otherwise there is an odd, but welcome, bite of buttercats this season. These are highly prized on the table and generally caught around cover. These are scientifically called spotted bullhead catfish, but a catfish by any other name would taste as sweet.
Bluegills and other panfish are all over the river and creeks, but a little scattered.
I saw a clip this week of an easy way to chum them up. Buy a box of those single serve oatmeal packs. Tear off the top and wet down the oats. Then dump them in the water next to the boat. Easy-peasy and no mess.
The Intracoastal Waterway
It's been a while since the vast majority of the river guides sang the blues in such harmony. Seems all of them ran into the same thing: undersized seatrout and redfish and very little else. And that includes the bluefish which should be ubiquitous out there right now.
There were a few reports of likewise just-over-slot flounder being caught. We call them "Sandwich flounder" because that's about what one will make - and certainly not worth killing.
The moon and/or a temperature change one way or the other might help, but there's no sense wasting your time speculating on that. The only good thing about real bad fishing is that it can only get better. Good luck.
The Atlantic
The few boats trolling out on the ledge generally limited out on blackfin tuna, iced down three or four mahi and jumped a couple of sailfish.
The good news for bottom fishing is the grouper bite is picking up. The bad news is you can't keep one.
However the vermillion, mutton and mangrove snapper are biting, along with a few black sea bass. porgies and good numbers of triggerfish.
Surf fishing the local beaches has been pretty dismal, with catches of mostly small whiting and few of them, along with small bonnethead sharks.
The pompano bite is south of us down around Daytona to New Smyrna — and worth the drive according to the guys down that way.
Calendar
The Ancient City Gamefish Association meets Jan. 19 at the clubhouse at 250 Brainard Drive. Social hour begins at 6 p.m., with dinner and the general meeting at 7 p.m.
Jim writes a weekly fishing column for The Record. You can contact him with reports, photos and quasi-believable fishing stories at creekratstaug@gmail.com.