Easter Egg Snook Hunt

It hasn't been the best month for us for snook fishing this year but we're getting a few here and there. The winds have been horrible most days, blowing us out of a lot of our regular inshore spots. Not to mention all the construction and dredging going on at Sebastian Inlet has been making things a little more challenging. All month we've been catching lots of jacks and bluefish drifting the inlet. For a week or two there were small goliath grouper (20 to 50 lbers) that were destroying our live shrimp. Those little grouper are so strong it's ridiculous. Lately it seems the snook have been hugging the rocks along the south jetty and yes yet again they are being very picky on what they want to eat. Threadfins and pilchards have been the baits of choice the last few weeks but finding them is another obstacle. My wife was out with me the other day and she noticed that the all the people from shore were trying to throw their baits way out past the boats and weren't catching anything. She said "they see us all in the boats catching the snook right in front of them next to the rocks, why do they keep throwing way out here?". I laughed and said "welcome to fishing at the inlet hun".

In the lagoon we've found several areas around the islands, mangroves, and docks that have been holding snook but just getting the right bait and presentation to them have been a chore. I can't stress this enough with fishing, you have to be patient and leave your bait in the water. If you keep reeling in and recasting to the same area you're gonna spook the fish then you'll just be sitting there getting a sun tan. If we're using live bait just let the bait do it's thing. Large pilchards have seemed to work the best in the mangroves the last few weeks. I had this 10 year old boy Aiden on the boat the other week and he landed himself a beautiful 31" keeper snook on the first cast within 10 seconds of the bait hitting the water. I don't think he realized how much of an accomplishment that was.

Offshore fishing has been few and far between because of the weather but I got a feeling it's gonna be a fantastic summer this year. We got out a couple days the last few weeks and caught lots of blue runners, bluefish, lane snapper, and a few mangrove snapper, some small cobia, and big big nurse sharks. Freelining we got small mahi and a massive 60 lb kingfish with a live mullet. When bottom fishing offshore you just never really know what you're gonna catch.

Bowfishing as always has been very successful out at Three Forks Marsh. We've found multiple schools of very large tilapia ranging anywhere from 3 to 10 lbs. We're upgrading the light setup and soon we'll be lighting up the world out there. Soon we'll have eight 150 watt lights running off a generator rather than our original 30 watt to 50 watt lights off the batteries. This should make these fish glow in the dark now.