My buddy Darryl and his family came to visit, so I reserved a boat to take him fishing as he loves fishing. Unfortunately, we did not plan for the Siberian cold front that pushed its way to here in Florida. We woke up and it was 54 degrees and raining. The weather radar showed it should clear up about 7:00am so we headed out.

We went to three tackle shops looking for bait and unfortunately no one had any live shrimp, so we settled for frozen. Talking with the owner at DeBrooks Fishing Corner, he told me the cold temperatures pushed the shrimp to deeper water and this made it difficult to catch them. He hoped to have bait in the next few days though.

We arrived at the dock about 6:45am and it was still raining so we waited in the car. I looked at the updated radar and it showed it raining until 8:00am. We decided to run and grab breakfast and wait out the rain. About 8:45am it was still raining but Darryl said let’s be men and head out anyways.

We loaded up the boat and headed out and it was wet and chilly. We could see the sun north, so we headed north. Just past the South Causeway bridge we saw flashes of fish all over and the sonar showed lots of fish, so we tossed out banana jigs tipped with shrimp. On the second cast Darryl landed a sail catfish about 18 inches long. We continued to cast here for a little bit without anymore success. I was wondering if the water temp dropping from 71 degrees to 68 degrees gave the fish lock jaw.

The next spot we tried was the Ft Pierce Yacht yard. We both threw the Moonwalker. After about 15 minutes Darryl changed it up to shrimp on the bottom. We fished here another 15 minutes with nothing biting so we moved on.

Next, we fished North Causeway bridge, once again no bites and we lost a few rigs getting stuck on the structure. Now we headed further north. We fished several of the channel markers heading up to Harbor Branch and even went over to a massive dock off Anchor Way. Unfortunately, nothing was biting today. So, I was getting frustrated as I knew Sheepshead are in our area, I just couldn’t find them, and I couldn’t put my buddy on fishing.

We ended up heading back south and fishing the Smithsonian Dock for about 30 minutes. We caught a few short Mutton Snapper, but we were at least catching some fish. I moved out to the area across the channel where we have caught Sheepshead in the past and once again, we only caught a few short snappers.

My neighbor told me his son did good at some of the channel markers heading south, so we tried a few of them. Once again, no luck. At this point it was about 1:00pm so I told Darryl I had one last spot we could try on the way back to the marina.

Our final spot was near the rocks that surround the marina. It didn’t take long before we started catching Mutton snappers between 10-12 inches. Both Darryl and I lost some bigger fish, I am assuming Red Groupers, as I have caught many in the spot. We fished this spot until 2:00pm and we caught probably 15 short snapper and one 12-inch Lane Snapper. If I had more fish in the cooler, I would have kept the Lane, but I didn’t feel like cleaning just one fish.

It was a tough day fishing; however, Daryl and I were blessed with a day on the water spending time together. Tania and I pray that all who make it out the rest of the week have a safe and blessed trip. May you have tight lines and good times.