St. Johns River – November Fishing Report

Ideally we should all be catching fish or hunting, enjoying the slight cool-down and preparing for the fall/winter fishing.

Since the Shrimp have not done anything normal, I state that if you try and you get them, more power to you.  As a whole, this goes down as a meager year at best.

Flounder will be active in and around Doctors Inlet, the hard shell bays and the City pier.  Baits of choice should be plastic grubs, snout worms and shiners.  The medium/smallish ones are the best.  Go and give it a fling.

Reds and Croaker will be rockin’ it, if we don’t have any super cool-down.  They love to eat as much as possible and bait shrimp, night crawlers, and crabs will get you a tug on the line or two.  So grab it and go!

Bass will be feeding like there’s no tomorrow before the temp drops.  They’ll be hitting the bait pods and eating all they can.  Watch for bird activity when you’re trying to jump these schoolers.  Also using crank baits in 8-10 feet of water might just fool them into a try or two.  So have at it.

Specks will start showing up in the creeks, mouths of creeks and around bridge pilings and deep water blow-downs.  You can use a variety of baits:  road runners, crab tail jigs, tube jigs, regular jigs, beetle spins and jig heads tipped with minnows.  You can also use just minnows, with a slip cork and/or split shot.  These beauties will be deep usually starting at 18-15 to 12-10 feet.  You’ve got to work at it, but the ones you catch usually are well worth it.

Bream fishing is slowing down with the cooling down.  You’ll still catch them in the pads with poppers or dipping or glob of worms in the pads.  The plus side to the last method is the Warmouth will be happy to tug your string and surprisingly a lot of them are very respectable.  So give it a try.

Well, it’s short, but action packed!  So,  ’til next time, keep your line wet and your lure movin’.–Richard