Banana River Blues and Jacks in Summer Pattern
Capt. Ron Presley
January 29, 2009
Cocoa Beach - Saltwater Fishing Report
Blues and Jacks in Summer Pattern
My fishing has been limited lately for various reasons. However the weather has been nice and fish are biting like it was summer. Most pros will tell you to slow down you retrieve in the winter to increase your opportunity of a hookup. Lately, with Indian Summer settling in water temperatures have warmed nicely as the day goes by and the bite is more like summer time.
On a recent outing I found both jacks and bluefish willing to take a plastic bait. Usually in the Winter I am using smaller baits like the Rip Tide 3 inch Mullet. On this winter day the fish preferred a larger bait. I started getting hookups when I switched to the 5 inch Rip Tide Flats Chub. The best color seemed to be something on the light side. Both the Gold Apricot and the Gold n' Glow worked well.
The jacks were the more plentiful and would fight for the right to eat one of the chubs. The 5 inch bait was rigged on a ¼ ounce Rip Tide Pro jig head. Rigged this way allows for long casts that cover a lot of territory. If you got a hit and missed, another jack was right there to take you on. That's what I mean by biting like it was summer. They were very aggressive.
I didn't catch as many blues that day, but they were just as aggressive. They were biting on the same 5 inch plastics and they wanted them swimming fast. It is always a good idea to vary your presentation until you pattern the fish on any given day. On this day it was larger baits than normal and faster retrieves than normal. It was more like summer fishing, but in the winter.
That's what it's all about. Good fishin'.
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