Hi guys, I’m Captain Ricky Poupore with this week’s Northeast Florida fishing report
This is the week of July 17th. This week the bait’s been relatively easy; it’s been along the beaches in shallow water out of St. Augustine inlet which is where we most of the time fish. It’s been anywhere from the north bar all the way up to like as far north as Serenata.
Pogies have been easy to catch so this week we’ve been doing a lot of king fishing and cobia fishing and we had one mangrove snapper trip. The kingfish have been anywhere from four mile reef as far as 70 80 feet of water. The bite has been really good… started off a little bit slow in the beginning of the week but it’s constantly picked up. With all this southwest wind the cobia have been showing up in in huge numbers. We’ve seen lots of cobia, very difficult to get them to the boat without the sharks eating them especially on kingfish gear but we’ve had several fish this week swim up to the boat and just swim behind the boat and we were able to catch them on a heavier setup and we were able to pitch a bait to them because we were prepared for it. That’s a key tip is be prepared for the cobias this week if you’re going to get out this weekend. The mangrove snapper trip was good fishing they were balled up underneath the boat we had a difficult time getting them away from the sharks and the barracudas and then chumming them the remoras were eating the chum faster than we can get it down. I don’t know what you can do about the remoras other than the obvious and as far as the sharks and stuff you just got to try to catch your fish quick you got to be prepared get them if you have you know heavy enough tackle to get them into the boat quick and once you start feeding those sharks they’re relentless they’re not gonna they’re not gonna give up so… get your fish into the boat quick and once they start move to the next spot you’re not going to get away from them. There have been a couple of sailfish around. I know that I missed one this week another captain I was fishing alongside of had one he caught one and lost one this week. There are sailfish around.
It’s not like you’re going to go out there and expect to catch one every trip but they have still been around and that is an option. This week we’ve had a beautiful tide rip coming out of the St. Augustine inlet. The cobias are not.. it’s it’s it’s got to form up just right to fish it and I don’t think the conditions were perfect to fish it this week however I did ride it one day for about 15 minutes and I saw a three triple tail on it and we saw a saw a big manta ray jump this week while we were trying to catch bait in it on an afternoon trip so if this southwest wind continues and the tide rip is there in the afternoons like it has been uh look for those manta rays along the tide rip. and with the manta rays you might find some cobias, just like springtime fishing .
The weather this week has been super unpredictable. The forecasts have been all over the place we’ve not been able to make a honest decision of whether we can go or not until the night before and then honestly I’ve just winged it. Two days this week, Tuesday and Wednesday I thought I was not going to be able to fish both evenings before and end up fishing it anyway and and the weather was pretty nice. So, I say if you’ve got the option to go out there and look at it go out there and look at it and see if it’s fishable. Just be very careful. The thunderstorms rolling in in the afternoon have gotten serious and and you can get yourself in a bind so get out there get fishing early and get back in before the storms come. It looks like this weekend’s weather forecast is getting a little bit better. it’s kind of rough right now. We’ll just have to see when the weekend gets closer but it looks like we may be able to get out and get more fishing done this weekend in a little bit more comfortable weather. Folks, thanks for watching if you found any of this information helpful please like and subscribe and until then, we’ll see you next week.