Florida vs Northeast Surfcasting

Maybe I am old and cranky (i don’t think this is a question, more or a rhetorical statement). Maybe I am way past my prime, too set in my ways to be able to accept different things. To some extent, there is a lot of truth to that. I do fish the way I want to fish these days. If you told me that  80 pound bass were being caught on every cast but I have to use bunker snag, I would tell you thanks, but no thanks. I rather catch 50 schoolies in noreaster than one 50 pounder on a jetty in crowded conditions. There is something about crowds that I cant stand. However there are behaved crowds like those generally in the Montauk northeast blows and then there are  crowds like ones at certain Inlet last year that to me, were behaving about a step above high school level. Some of us are better equipped to deal with this than others. Maybe its a personalty fault in my case. God knows I have many of those…

Sunday I arrived at West Palm Beach airport at 4 pm. The plan was to drive to Fort Pierce Hutchinson Island which is about an hour away, check in, unpack and get ready to fish with Patrick Sebile from Sebile lures the next day. Patrick had a different idea and I drove straight to his house, grabbed a waders out of the luggage in trunk and off to Sebastian Inlet we were to catch the outgoing current in the dark.

The Sebastian Inlet It really is a remarkable place to fish. On any single cast you might hook up with a giant snook, bull red, tarpoon, shark or Goliath grouper. Or you might hook up with first three and then last two will eat first three while you are trying to land them. There is also a coral covered bottom that eats plugs and jigs like child eats candy. Often.This is probably why people use a single hook and sinkers and live bait. It gets expensive to keep donating plugs or even bucktails to the inlet.

We fished until after midnight with another young gentleman in waders. The south side has a very narrow jetty that can get crowded fast with only few guys. Since he was throwing bucktails , Patrick and I drifted plugs on the outgoing by casting into the inlet and then letting them drift out for another 50 to 100 yards before starting the retrieve. Unfortunately although i did hook up few times the fish broke me off every single time. It was starting to get to the point in the tide where you almost expected a hit on every cast. Suddenly around 1 AM,  4 kids, probably high school age descended on the jetty, only foot from me and with 7 foot rods started to cast the opposite way, into the ocean.If i told you I could smell them you know how close they were. With a 11 food rod there was no way I could have made a cast without hooking them in the head or hooking their rods.

With amazement I watched as they fished with not as much as “sorry”. I got an impression later in the week, when I’ve seen a school of fish break and everyone jumped all over each other on the pier,  that this is accepted practice. If there is a room you might be casting a darter and a minute later (no joke) a guy with PENN International TUNA reel and 6 foot rod, with a full skate tied on to ballon might be casting next to you. Somehow they all manage to coexist but I could not. As you can see on pic bellow , the jetty is small and narrow. Hard to have guys fishing both sides when its fell than 10 feet wide

I know well enough if this was  NY someone would have punched someone or worse , pulled a knife. I am used to getting a least a ability to cast , meaning you would never set up to fish from position that i am casting, forcing me to cast by bringing my rod in 12 o’clock position (instead of 3 o’clock) and make short casts. you might think I am winning but that is really not the point of this blog post. I packed my stuff and left. As a “guest” on the jetty I have no ability, desire or right to tell locals how I want to fish the place. Again, I am a just a guest and I am ok with the way things are done. I have no desire to argue with locals who have been fishing this way since I guess they built the place.

I am just surprised I guess how different the surf fishing etiquette is from what we do in Northeast.

Now don’t get me wrong, we have PLENTY of issues with crowds and etiquette in the northeast. The difference is very little surf fishing in our neck of the woods is done from piers. Again, I thought it was interesting how there is a different behavior and expectations in the same sport, but different locations

No more or less