Red-hot inside, stone-cold outside

*Red-hot inside, stone-cold outside*

**The St. Johns River and area lakes:** Hermine did not drop the rain the weatherman was predicting, and it had no effect on the shrimping except, perhaps, to kick it up a notch.

The river is crawling with shrimp right now — day and night. These are what most would call “mediums.” But now, instead of a few mediums mixed in with a bunch of small shrimp, probably 90 percent are the keepers with the other 10 percent made up of small shrimp and large specimens. It should be different. Generally there would already have been a “class” of shrimp that had made its way from Mayport south down to around Lake George, growing along the way. The big shrimp are caught down there, and then turn around and head north toward the Atlantic, while another class of smaller shrimp pass them along the way. There was only one report of big shrimp and that came from a couple of guys working a dock down by Tocoi. They loaded up on “fryers.” The good news is that the season looks to be a good one, getting better as September bottoms out.

You’ll see where the shrimp are by the lines of boats, especially around the Shands Bridge in Green Cove Springs. There’s a wiggly line of them following channel markers 1, 2 and 3 there (three has been the hottest one).

The city docks are a zoo, both night and day. The three municipal piers in Green Cove are also crowded. It’s just that time.

Otherwise the best bite going in the river is down around Welaka and Lake George where there’s a tremendous flounder bite going on. None of those guides thought to tell me about that (I wouldn’t either), but a Lake Lochloosa fish camp operator told me that a guy stopped in Tuesday morning and bought him completely out of shiners, around six dozen — and he was heading for Little Lake George to target the flounder which, he said, were murdering the live shiners.

Bass fishing is OK, as is the panfish bite. But the doldrums of summer are petering out and you can smell fall just around the corner. Things will change fast.

**The Intracoastal Waterway:** Everyone was catching fish this week in the wake of Hermine. It probably has a lot more to do with a huge run of perfect-sized finger mullet on the move, by most accounts meandering south. Everybody’s using live mullet for bait and everybody’s catching limits of slot reds. Most are being targeted on the spartina shores of the ditch, on falling tides. Captain Rob Johnson got a bite of really nice speckled seatrout Tuesday, weighing a 7.5- and a 5-pounder, along with another few 18-inchers. All hit live mullet.

The mangrove snapper bite is about as good as it ever gets, and many of these are up to 18-inch fish. The finger mullet are a little big for the average mangroves, but a bucket of small mud minnows will drive them nuts. They’re just about anywhere there are pilings or riprap. And they are fine on the table.

The flounder bite has also been very good, just overshadowed by the reds and mangroves.

There were schools of jumbo jack crevalle and spinning reel-sized tarpon around the downtown bayfront, especially around the mooring balls there. The black drum bite is also a good bet under the bridges.

**The Atlantic:** As good as the inshore fishing has been, the outside fishing has been bad. Most of the guides couldn’t get out until Wednesday and were not glad they did. It was real slow, with almost no action on the troll, but plenty of baitfish stacked up on the local reefs and wrecks. Most catches included a cuda, a couple of bonito and a snake kingfish if you were lucky. The bottom fishing was as bad with (of course) illegal red snapper and undersized vermilion snapper.

There were some scattered reports of decent catches of whiting in the surf. One guy also caught two legal pompano on a trip out this week. The good story is that the red-fish are moving into the surf now, and that always coincides with the finger mullet run out of the inlet, mentioned earlier. This can be a ton of fun. The reds don’t hide out behind distant sandbars like whiting and pompano. They come right into the breakers, and you’ll often see them surfing the waves. When this happens, leave the big surf rods at home. Bring your smaller spinning stuff. I’ve got a small ultralight I use only for this, with 8-pound braid, a half-ounce barrel sinker and a foot or two of 20-pound flurocarbon leader. Flip out a live finger mullet and hold on. It is a blast. And two redfish filets makes up for a whole lot of whiting sides (but the whiting do fry better).

**CONTRIBUTED PHOTO ;** **Isaiah Schleissing found this pair of flounder while kayak fishing with his grandfather, Gordy Schleissing, in the flats around Devil’s Elbow.**

You’ll also pick up some whiting, especially around the high tides. A big black drum or a sheepshead would not be a surprise, but not on finger mullet, just on shrimp, clams or crab.

We did not get any reports from out in deep water. Don’t know of any boats that tried to get there.

**The weather:** We’ll have southerly winds all weekend with seas forecast at 2 to 3 feet Saturday, diminishing to 2 feet Sunday. There’s no rain in sight.

Jim Sutton provides a weekly fishing report for The Record

*Contact him* [email protected]