Fishing News

Let's start this by answering a question sent in by a reader. He wants to know some good GPS numbers in the Cedar Keys area. As one old fisherman once told me, "You got a better chance of getting a man's wife than you have of getting the GPS on his fishing spot". Certainly secret spots stay that way, especially in deeper water "grouper holes". All is not lost though. The Gainesville Offshore Fishing Club has a website and it contains several offshore GPS locations and some general descriptions and names of inshore fishing spots. That address is http://www.gofc.us/cedarkey.htm When you fish these, observe the depth, underwater features, and any other relevant data. When you find the same conditions somewhere else, fish it. If you catch fish, you have your own secret spot. Good luck!

The tarpon have arrived. Several reports of sightings and a few accidental hookups have been reported. Accidental is when you hookup with one on a shrimp with a whimpy little trout rod. Look for tarpon on the flats close to a deeper channel.

Alvin Landress from Brookfield GA with a twenty-four inch trout caught off Atsena Otie

Speaking of trout fishing, most reports have been of many shorts and a keeper or two with spanish, ladyfish, blues and blue runners thrown in here and there. There are always a few people who do well. This past week it was Alvin Landress and family from Brookfield, GA. While drifting on the back side of Atsena Otie casting shrimp, glass minnows and cut bait, they caught thirteen keepers in addition to about two dozen shorts. The largest was twenty-four inches and came on a glass minnow. Conventional wisdom says the trout move up onto the flats when the water temperature hits 80 F. That is about now, so the best is yet to come.