Fishing Forum

We rented a beach house on St. George Island in the Florida Panhandle for 2 weeks. Our son and his family stayed with us the first week and then we had the empty nest syndrome. We experienced every kind of weather, wind and temperatures. Near record cold temps with 20 mph North winds, rain with 20 mph South winds, and near record high temps. Mixed in with all this we had some pretty good fishing, mainly for spotted trout and redfish.<br /><br />The Florida limit for spotted trout is 5 fish per day. The minimum legal size is 15 in., but only one can be over 20 in. The limit on redfish is one per day with a slot limit between 18 and 27 in.<br /><br />We fished various areas, but most fish were caught along the bridge between East Point and Apalachicola in 5-7 ft. of water. We caught some fish on live shrimp, but most were caught on the 3 in. Gulp Shrimp, new penny color. Some were caught on the XCalibur lipless crankbait, chrome/chartreuse. In the future we might take a couple of dozen live shrimp for "insurance", but we'll depend on the Gulp Shrimp lure to do most of our catching.<br /><br />The highlight of the trip was catching my personal best Spanish Mackerel (24 in. to fork, 5.04 lbs) and my PB Spotted Trout (23 in., 3.76 lbs). The minimum legal size for Spanish is 12 in. Both of these fish were caught on a Gulp Shrimp. The trout was in 2 ft. of water on an oyster bar. The spanish was caught 5 ft. deep out of a tide line where coffee colored bay water met green sea water.<br /><br />We caught several limit of trout and redfish. It was too early and the water too warm (69 deg.) for the sheepshead bite to be there in the bay.<br /><br />My best redfish (24 in.) and flounder (14.5 in.) on this trip were caught on the last afternoon wading in the bay on the back of St. George Island, again on Gulp Shrimp.<br /><br />We had a really great time, but we also had some ness. My mother had to spend a couple of days in the hospital while we were gone, but, hopefully it was a false alarm, more tests to be done. Our 14 year 9 months old chocolate lab, Julie, died unexpectedly suddenly even though she had fought cancer and other ailments for some time. We are really missing her. She had her last "big fling" when we took her to the beach for 2 weeks in August.<br /><br />Enjoy the pictures!