On Sunday morning Tania and I hosted our son, Devin and our good friend Darryl on the boat. We arrived at the dock about 6:15am with bait and gear ready for a day on the ocean. The only thing we had to pick up was some baitfish. My son asked if we could try and get him a permit, crevalle jack, or a large snook. With the targeted species in mind, we decided to go to the boils. It’s the only spot I know where we could possibly catch all three of the targeted species.

We were the first ones to arrive at the dock on this beautiful morning and looking at the tides it was perfect timing for catching permit at the boils. We seem to do best catching them at high tide as the water seems clearer. Once we loaded up and started to head out of the marina, I called Dave from Dave’s Live Bait to see if he still had any threadfins. He did and told me he would be at Stan Blum.

As I came out of the marina I throttled up, however the boat did not respond. At full throttle we only got up to 3900 RPM and we did not get on plane. Tania walked up front and the nose started to come down so I asked Darryl to join her. We finally got on plan, but we only got up to 4000 RPM, so I turned us back around and headed back to the dock. Fortunately, there was another boat which just returned to the water that was not taken for the day.

It was 7:00am by the time we switched boats and were heading back out of the marina. This time when I throttled up the engine revved up and we were on plane in no time. I felt much better going to the ocean now. I called up Dave again and apologized for the delay and luckily, he still had enough bait for what we wanted.

After getting our baits, we headed out the Fort Pierce Inlet and made a hard right and made our way to the boils. We arrived at the boils about 7:30am and wet our lines right away. We were the only boat at the boils when we arrived so I went to the east buoy to start drifting. With calm wind and it being the top of high tide the drift was pretty slow.

The bite was slow the first drift, however we were seeing life all around us. Towards the end of the first drift Devin hooked up and landed a small porkfish. We decided to move a bit closer to shore since the bite was slow on the first drift. Shortly after we started our first drift Tania hooked up with something big and was fighting for a bit. When she got it to the boat, she was so excited as she landed another permit! This was a good sign as I was hoping to put our son Devin and my buddy Darryl on a permit.

Once we had Tania’s permit on the boat Darryl’s drag started screaming! We actually thought it was a shark with the way it was fishing; however, after the five-minute fight we landed another permit! The weight was being taken off my shoulders to put my family and friends on permit. We continued the drift, but we did not catch anymore permit.

We did several more drifts the rest of the morning. Mostly catching bluerunners, but we did have a drift where all four of us caught bonefish. I was really excited as on this trip we caught multiple prized species! We only needed to catch a tarpon to have a slam! Unfortunately, we never caught a tarpon.

About 11:00am I decided to anchor at the buoy to see what we could catch. We haven’t had a single bite on the threadfins so we still had a lot of bait. Once anchored up, the bite was slow but was constant and we were putting snapper in the cooler. I also had the first take on the live line however after a brief screaming of the drag it broke off.

About 11:30am we were all hot and I was ready to head in.  It was a long weekend and the sun was taking its toll on me. On the way in I stopped at the first bit of action we saw on the surface. I couldn’t resist, and it paid off. I hooked up with a decent bonita. I was happy to have caught the bonita as I was heading to two 4^th of July parties and I promised to bring fish dip if we caught fish.

We continued to hit the bait balls for about a mile. Tania, Darryl, and I all caught bonita, unfortunately Devin wasn’t having any luck. I changed up Devin’s jig to a silver spoon in hopes of enticing a bite, but today just wasn’t Devin’s day.

Since we could see fish the whole way back to the inlet, I decided to troll back instead of continuing to cast as we were all tired. It didn’t take long and both rods went down. The one popped off and Devin started to fight the other. Since we were trolling the fish took a lot of line and I had to start chasing it down to get some line back. Once we were heading to the fish Devin was able to fight the fish the rest of the way to the boat. The fish took almost 100 yards of line so it took Devin awhile to get it to the boat. He was really excited to finally catch a larger fish. It wasn’t the permit he wanted but a large bonita puts up a good fight also!

We ended up getting back to the inlet about 12:30pm. Devin ended up catching a few spanish mackerel as we trolled to the inlet. At this point we pulled in all the lines and made our way to the dock. When we made it back to the marina, the docks were full so we had to wait about five minutes in order to make room for us. In that time Darryl tossed out a threadfin at the rocks in hopes of landing a snook or a jack crevalle. To his dismay nothing took his bait.

We made it back to the dock, unloaded all the gear and released the left-over bait. The bait didn’t last long, once we threw them in the water there were tarpons, big jacks and ladyfish just tearing them up. I wish we could fish the marina sometimes.   

All in all, we had a great day on the water. It was the second week we targeted permit and landed them. Tania and I pray all who made it out this holiday weekend had blessed and safe trips, full of tight lines and good times. We also pray for those going on this week!

The Treasure Coast Chapter of Salt Strong is now holding monthly meetings in Fort Pierce. The meetings are being held on the 4^th Thursday of the month. The next meeting will be July 27^th. These club meeting are for inside members only. If you would like to become an inside member here is what the membership includes: access to the in-person meetings as well as all the other perks such as 20% off all tackle, Smart Fishing spots, and insider information on trends in your area. We will also have guest speakers at our meetings and we will be holding monthly tournaments. Click the link below to get a FREE pack of slam shady or a 10-Day Test-Drive of The Smart Fishing Spots App and The Salt Strong Insider Club . . . And We’ll Ship You $35 Worth of FREE Lures, an “Inshore Fishing Manifesto” Book (Physical copy) & Decals – Yours to Keep Even If You Cancel!