This past week we have seen something unique that I have never heard of or seen before. We had a young angler named Daniel Peterson, from Wisconsin, fishing with cut clam pieces for sheepshead on our dock catching large black mullet one after another for a solid thirty minutes or so. Normally you cannot catch mullet on hook and line unless you fool them with a small gold pinfish sized hook and a ball of bread so seeing him catch mullet on a 2ot hook with clams for bait was wild! We have also seen lots of the sheepshead being caught as well, before the mullet started feeding he was catching some nice sheeps with the occasional spadefish mixed in on the cut clams for bait.

The nice weather mid-week helped the waters in Johns Pass to clear up a bit and the white bait was super thick inside and at the mouth of the pass making the mackerel, ladyfish and jack crevalle really excited and they fed well while the water was moving. Especially when anglers were using the live greenbacks from Hubbard’s Marina free lined into the tide or under a bobber off the jetties or beach behind our office. Live shrimp was working well too, but they are all feeding on the white bait so the green backs definitely seemed to produce a more active bite for the Johns Pass anglers. If you don’t have live bait available a casting spoon or gotcha plug is a great artificial choice for these species to bend the rod and have some fun soaking a line. Pompano have slacked off a bit with the more murky waters due to the recent storms and with this big cold front coming through today it will most likely be until mid-week this coming week till we see those fish start biting well again on the jigs bounced along the bottom, or the live fiddler crabs or shrimp weighted to bottom.

Flounder are picking up however, seeing lots of nice flounder caught on live shrimp or slow moving DOA artificial shrimp along the sandy drop offs that run parallel with the Johns Pass Jetties. While the water is muddy this weekend and early this coming week the targeted species should be the sheepshead or black drum. For black drum, I like a big live shrimp on the bottom or even a crab for bait. Then the sheepshead have been loving the fiddler crabs, cut clams, or the pieces of shrimp right next to the structure of Johns Pass.