Hey, it’s Captain Austin once again bringing you the fishing report for the Edgewater, New Smyrna Beach and Ponce Inlet areas. This past month, the fishing has steadily gotten better. One of the big reasons is the bait. We are seeing large schools of mullet, especially in the backwaters. The mullet are bait-sized (4 to 8 inches) and on certain tides they become very active.

With all the mullet around the trout, jacks, redfish and snook are never far behind. In addition to the mullet, the shrimp are showing up in good numbers. This is especially apparent when you fish around lighted docks. When fishing the docks expect to see mangrove snapper, trout and snook all smashing the bait!

Finally the cobia showed up for a few days this past month with many anglers getting in on the action. As
I mentioned last month, cobia fishing can be more like hunting than fishing at times. You spend most of the day scanning the water looking for manta rays, turtles or anything else floating around. If you are lucky, you may have as many as a dozen cobia trailing behind a manta ray and that’s when the real fun starts! You want to cast your bait or lure to a spot in front of the ray where you don’t snag or spook it.

Our two old standbys, redfish and snook, become more consistent and easier to catch in May. Hopefully we will see some of the biggest snook of the year being caught in the next few months. As usual, the key to catching both is the tides. Moving water flushes bait out and the redfish and snook wait to ambush the bait in many places along the intracoastal and in Ponce Inlet.

One type of fishing we have developed over the years is fishing for goliath grouper. Goliath groupers are the largest grouper on the planet with the largest one caught here in Florida weighing in at 680 pounds! Fishing for these amazing grouper peaks here in the spring and summer and we have been fortunate to catch some real nice ones the last couple of weeks.

Warning: You better eat your Wheaties before you decide to tangle with one of these bad boys! If you’ve never caught a big grouper we’d love to take you out. Call or text us at (386) 689-9056.

CHEWS WISELY FISHING CHARTERS
Capt. Austin Campbell
(386) 689-9056
ChewsWiselyFishingCharters.com
@CaptAustinCampbell