I woke up this morning with a plan to spend most of the day fishing Florida’s shores. Here is the plan I laid out for the day:
- Arrive at Dunlawton Flat Bridge 2 hours before sunrise to fish for trout/snook/flounder
- At sunrise move to Sunglow Pier for breakfast while fishing
- 1 hour before slack tide move to a public dock on the ICW and fish for flounder until tide starts moving
- Move back to Flat Bridge as tide there would be slowing down
I had a great plan!
I arrived at the Flat Bridge and started to work my way across the bridge using a Berkley Gulp Swimming Mullet. I was able to land 2 small Snook and 1 lady fish in the 2 hours I was there. I tried for some flounder but the tide was just ripping to strong to keep a bait near the bottom.
I moved to Sunglow Pier. Ordered some biscuits and gravy, and started eating while soaking a live shrimp on one rod and a mud minnow on the other. The breakfast was great, the fishing was not so great. Nothing ate the mud minnow and all I caught on the shrimp was a pair of very small whiting. On my way to my car I decided to check the water temp, and it felt quite a bit warmer than I expected.
After 3 hours of Sunglow Pier I hit the dock. There is a long walk from parking to fishing, and it was already HOT out. By the time I got where I was going I had a good sweat worked up. I started fishing and not much was biting. I stayed for about 2 hours with very little luck, and I figure it is partially because the summer heat has arrived. So I called it a day, skipped the last planned stop and went home.
Summer patterns in Florida often require early starts and early finishes. Most fish will be active right before and after sunrise. The heat of the day causes the water to warm quite a bit. This warm water leads to sluggish fish that are frequently inactive! So its time to get those alarm clocks set for EARLY fishing!