Largemouth bass and redfish share the waters here. Capt. Brett Cannon, left, and John Eggers compare catches.
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Just south of Butler Bridge on the west side of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), is Jacksonville’s own Pablo Creek, one of the most unique features in the city limits.
The reason? Pablo Creek has a significant amount of fresh water, unlike all other creeks connecting to the ICW in this region. Other creeks are filled with oyster mounds and spartina grass shorelines most often associated with typical Northeast Florida saltwater tributaries. The brackish confines of Pablo allow it to grow an entirely different assortment of plant life on its shores.
For instance, tall bulrushes decorate the banks of this rather narrow, brackish tributary. That’s one reason Pablo’s relatively undeveloped shorelines have anglers returning again and again, for another taste of its great scenery. This unspoiled creek is bordered by the Dee Dot Ranch and Pablo Creek Golf Course. The only man-made structure on the creek is a small bridge, one dock and a dike in the back of the creek, located just north of a stretch of the ICW known as Palm Valley. The short bridge is located fairly close to the mouth of the creek. Its low clearance restricts larger craft from entering and when the tide is high, even smaller craft have to use caution passing beneath the bridge; anything higher than the average poling platform stands too tall.
The creek is narrow and has numerous small feeders. In addition to the bulrushes in its upper reaches, it also has some spartina grass and a few oyster mounds in the short, salty stretch near the mouth. Pablo is greatly influenced by tide as well; there’s at least a 4-foot tide drop and the current can be very fast during certain tide phases, which can make it a challenging place to fish. Pablo’s depths average around eight feet—however, there are some holes around the creek bends where depths plummet to 20 feet. It’s one of the more navigable creeks in the ICW, although boaters must be cautious of logs and stumps that spread out along the shore throughout the creek.
Captain Brett Cannon has been guiding on Pablo Creek for the past five years, but he’s been fishing there for over 15. If one of the many alligators in Pablo Creek were to recognize anyone, they would recognize Brett’s 21-foot skiff, known as the Whompus Cat.
A huge alligator takes a dip.
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I recently fished this creek with Brett, who shared numerous tips and interesting approaches for fishing this wonderful place. Most of his pointers hinged on fishing the creek in relation to tidal phases. He likes to target a variety of salt and freshwater species here, depending upon the season.
Brett had a great tip for targeting largemouth bass in the creek, one of the more challenging species to catch here. He consults his Florida Sportsman Fishing Planner, and looks for days with an extreme low tide. He prefers to fish an hour before until an hour after low tide. His favorite lure for bass here is an unweighted, tequila shad-colored, 6-inch, curly-tail plastic worm. Days with negative low tides are best; that negative number denotes a below-normal low tide. His favorite scenario is a negative low tide coupled with a west wind, which blows water out of the ICW back to the Atlantic. That drops tides even lower. He says when conditions are right for extreme low tides, bass are concentrated in a small ditch of water, and it’s just a matter of tempting them with the right lure.
Brett actually spends the majority of his time on the water guiding for saltwater species, and he’s seen great action on spotted seatrout, flounder and redfish in this little-known creek. He prefers the last of the falling tide, and casts 1⁄4-ounce jigs tipped with live shrimp on lightweight spin outfits. He targets the mouths of various small feeder streams throughout the creek, where gamefish usually wait to ambush prey. In late winter and early spring Brett also likes to work deeper creek bends, where he’s tapped into a significant population of black drum that holds in these deeper stretches. He’s landed drum to eight pounds there, which offer one heck of a fight on light spin tackle.
Some lunker largemouth swim in Pable Creek; 5-pounders and up are common.
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Brett has a few clients who like panfish, which he pursues during fall in the creek’s upper reaches. He anchors near a prime piece of structure and baits the area heavily with hog feed. Once the fish are chummed up, he lowers a live worm via a canepole. The bream bite is often fast and furious, with mullet and freshwater catfish usually mixed in. Another strange aspect of this place is that redfish hold far upriver, coexisting peacefully with black bass and panfish.
Another cool trick for the creek’s upper regions is to target alligator gar with a fly rod. Brett uses a 6- to 8-weight rod, attaching a short piece of nylon line to his 17-pound leader with a barrel swivel. He finds it unnecessary to use a hook with the nylon rope, because the gar’s teeth generally get tangled in the strands. The gar are typically most aggressive during summer months.
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Redfish and bass were using tree stumps.
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Local anglers Danny and Gary Brown have been fishing Pablo Creek since the early 1970s, often from a canoe. Their initial interest was to learn how to catch bass in the creek. On one notable trip they caught over 30 largemouths; it turns out they’ve landed many bass in the 5-pound class and two fish over seven pounds, one of which had a head the size of a 10-pounder. They surmised it was a thin, post-spawn fish.
In their quest to master bass fishing, the duo stumbled across a very effective technique for catching redfish. They were experimenting with deep-running crankbaits in the back of Pablo, but were surprised at the number of quality redfish there. The creek is full of fallen timber, and they found that redfish and largemouth bass were using tree stumps and laydowns to either ambush or root out prey. They dis
covered that bouncing crankbaits off the front and back of stumps was time well spent, though it turned out there were more redfish willing to bite than bass. Danny prefers crankbaits that dive two to six feet, and he’s had the most success with gold-and-orange combinations.
Because of the redfish’s serious strength and the numerous structure, Danny changed the treblehooks on his crankbaits to stronger 4X hooks. He also uses 20-pound braided line to horse these fish away from downed timber. Danny reports catching oversize panfish on those crankbaits as a bycatch, “but they were trophy-class panfish.”
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Taken as a whole, there are two great things about fishing Pablo Creek. The first is the boat ride through the creek. It’s most productive to fish the creek on the last of the falling tide, running all the way to the back of the creek and then fishing back toward the ICW with the tide.
The boat ride is a tour in itself, reminding one of Marlin Perkin’s Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. You’re riding through this narrow, zig-zagging creek that seems to never end, the bulrush grass in some areas so tall you can’t see above it. Alligators are everywhere. As you turn the corners, some of them sit there fearless, while others turn their heads and bolt for the water. There are gators the size of small lizards, little 2- and 3- footers, and some over eight feet long. The unspoiled creek also has plenty of snakes, bird life, nutria, manatee and other critters.
In addition to the scenery, you never know what sort of fish will bite next. A few anglers have landed striped bass in the creek, as well as quite a few snook—highly unusual in the Jacksonville area. There are also tarpon in the creek. Sometimes in summer, you can find an entire school of tarpon rolling on the surface. Typically they’re in the 20- to 50-pound class, which is all one would want to try to handle in this narrow creek.
It’s also cool to catch bass and redfish in the same area. Brackish-water redfish take on a darker, richer coloration and many in Pablo sport multiple spots. Often, you can cast into a creekmouth and drag out a 12-inch freshwater largemouth. On the next cast your drag is suddenly screaming: you’re hoping for a 10-pound largemouth, but it always turns out to be a 5-pound redfish. As for hooking into a 10-pound redfish, when that happens, I’m always hoping it’s going to be a striper, though it hasn’t happened for me yet.
However, Pablo Creek is definitely one body of water where this possibility exists.
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