Florida Road Trip 2013 (Day 18)

After dropping Ellen off in Miami, Michael and I were on our way to Sebastian Inlet. I've always heard good things about the area but never had the chance to fish it. Today was more about scouting than actually being productive.

We stopped by a bait shop called Wabaso Tackle Shop to get some live shrimp, but unfortunately they were out. I wanted to mentioned this shop since they gave us some really good information about the area and the service was very friendly.

The fee to get into the park at Sebastian Inlet was $8 for the two of us. We took a look at the water while crossing over the inlet and we could see big rollers slamming the beach. The wind was blowing hard onshore and it was rough!

Michael and I decided to fish inside the inlet but we took a walk out to the north pier.

It was a complete clusterf-k up and down the pier. Maybe it was the holidays and you have both local and tourists (including us) swarming the pier. But it was indeed a clusterf-k at the end of the pier because it was the definition of shoulder-to-shoulder - if you were within the cluster of people and you hooked into a good size fish, you would be f-k'd! There was not even room to squeeze in! We did see a couple of Jack Crevalle, a Fat Snook and a couple of Southern Kingcroaker landed during our 2 minutes of watching. But this type of combat fishing is not something I need on my holiday...unless I see someone catching Florida Pompano with ease...which I did not.

So Michael and I fished within the inlet for a bit and nothing was biting. We decided to check the catwalk out and caught a few Hairy Blenny. I also found a really rounded Spottail Pinfish that I thought was interesting enough to take a picture. I have never seen them this rounded.

I cut the pinfish up for bait hoping for something large. Bonnethead Shark is common in the inlet and I was hoping to find one. Winter also brings along large Red Drum and Black Drum to the area and both loved to take a pinfish. But nothing was going on at all for the 20+ anglers at the catwalk, except for one guy who caught a really big Sheepshead.

Michael and I caught a few more Hairy Blenny, small Black Seabass and a Sergeant Major. We waited until the 6pm high tide but the water never did slack completely, so we packed it up to be on our way toward Orlando.