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Panhandle Fishing Report - Pensacola Bay & Choctawhatchee Bay
Capt. Eddie Woodall
December 14, 2004
Pensacola - Saltwater Fishing Report
The Northeast and Northwest winds have finally started to do their thing. As of today, there still hasn’t been a real cold front to drive the bait into the Gulf. But, after the next few days thing are going to change.
For some reason, this great population of the Bull Red Fish here is just kept a secret. Almost daily I get calls from anglers all over the country asking where I go to get all those pictures of these giant Bronze Beauties that are posted on fullnetcharters.com and in Cyber Anglers photo section! Well they’re here, right in my back yard. It’s hard to explain to a person the awesome display of seeing 500, twenty five pound Bull Reds in one school all exploding on bait at the same time. Some would think that the Navy was performing munitions exercises out of N.A.S. Pensacola! And then when you look around you would probably see several more schools doing the same thing in almost any direction. Then comes catching the fish- when they are feeding on top like this, its prime time for the fly fisherman to drop his fly into the mayhem and hold on! Then when the fish go down I like to cast a Buck tail Jig out and work it to the bottom where the Reds are cleaning up the left over injured bait. All this is going on in Pensacola Bay, there are also just as many of these Bull Reds out in the Gulf. Yesterday I ventured out to have a look see. This was after the clients I had just wanted a change of scenery. After all they had landed, photographed and released more than a dozen Bulls in just 1 1/2 hours, with the biggest bottoming out a 35lb. scale. We were not disappointed, as soon as I came around the Fort Pickens point, and into the Gulf I saw birds working to the South East. It was big schools of these Bull Reds feeding on top. The water out in the Gulf was as clear as it could be, so now instead of finding fish on the bottom machine, all you had to do was look over the side of the boat, we could see the fish 20 foot deep running bait under the boat. Now if this doesn’t get your heart rate up YOU’RE DEAD!!!
So as you might guess the Bull Red fishing is doing well right now and will just get better as the winter goes on.
The Speckled Trout are making there migration into the river systems in full force now. I fished in Escambia Bay last week and did fair on the trout. The water was too muddy to expect a great day. But I did catch my first Striped Bass for the season. And a few nice slot sized Reds were also caught.
Out in the Gulf the Grouper are doing well and the catch and release Snapper are bigger than ever. The Black Fin Tuna are coming off the Edge on a regular basis.
So whether it’s in-shore or off-shore fishing you like, there’s a lot of fish being caught this winter, come on down and get in on some of the best fishing that Florida has to offer.
I know one thing for sure-- you ain’t going to catch’em sittin on the couch.
So get out there, and take a kid fishing!
Screaming Drags till next time, God Bless.
Professional Fishing Guide
Capt. Eddie Woodall
Full Net Charters
www.fullnetcharters.com
850-936-8203
850-565-0593
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