For boating flats anglers, best place to launch is probably the ramp on the Stuart Causeway/Ocean Drive. If you’re headed for the inlet itself or offshore, the ramps at Sandsprit Park in Stuart off St. Lucie Boulevard also are handy; they’re within sight of the jetties. (The bar at the tip of the park is another good spot for waders, too.)

JUPITER INLET

With its lighthouse-capped hill on the north side, the inlet at Jupiter is one of Florida’s most picturesque. The red brick structure is over 100 years old and still in daily operation. (Call (561) 747-6639 for tour info.) But it’s the lights down on the docks of the marinas and restaurants on the south side that attract the attention of anglers. At the Jupiter Seaport Marina, I stood on the dock on a morning this spring and looked down into a wall of snook six feet deep and 30 feet across, every one of them over the minimum 26-inch size limit. Eagle rays finned past, a pair of tarpon cruised through, and sargasso weed made up the flotsam. (You can’t fish off the docks here, but you can pull up late at night in your boat, anchor and drift a pilchard in under the deck. Hang on!)

The sargasso coming through an inlet gives a hint of how close the blue water is here; sometimes it comes nearly to the beach, bringing with it sails, dolphin and even the occasional white marlin. It’s more dependably out at the 80-foot break and beyond, however, which is itself only minutes from the inlet.

Jupiter is the creation of the Loxahatchee River, an abrupt stream that rises only a few miles into the savannahs to the west, but which is fed by canals entering its south arm, carrying with it the tadpoles, catfish and snapping turtles all the way from J.W. Corbett Wildlife Preserve, which stretches almost to the banks of Okeechobee. The main Loxahatchee doglegs to the northeast into Jonathan Dickinson State Park, and the much narrower North Fork wanders off toward Hobe Sound. The dark waters of all three forks attract migrating snook in winter, with the dam outflow on the South Fork a favorite after heavy rains. The main fork has lots of 12-foot-deep holes around the bends where it narrows down, and these are good spots to pull a sinking plug in winter for snook. The lower river sometimes gets a run of big blues and jacks in from the inlet in fall and early winter, as well.

Jupiter Sound, just inside the barrier island, is a different kettle of fish, with lots of grassflats and docks; it’s a better choice in spring, summer and fall. (If you’re a night prowler, check out the S.R. 707 bridge at Tequesta, but take your big guns.) A public ramp at Burt Reynolds Park, just south of the U.S. 1 bridge in Jupiter, is the best place to launch either to head out the inlet or into the sound.

Jupiter offers excellent action for jetty anglers at Jupiter Beach Park, reached by following A1A to Jupiter Beach Road on the south side of the inlet. Use a sabiki rig around the rocks on the inside to get your bait, then walk it out on the jetty and you may tangle with anything from snook to smoker kingfish.

The rock formations at Blowing Rocks Preserve north of Tequesta and at the House of Refuge north of St. Lucie Inlet are a rarity along beaches anywhere in the southeast. And they provide feeding stations for all of the migrators in September and October as the baitfish hurry south. In calm weather, you can work these fish from a flats boat on a trolling motor, easing near the surf to put your bait among the breaks.

OFFSHORE

When you head offshore, you’ll find the first dropoff about six miles off St. Lucie Marker 2, and a mile or so closer out of Jupiter, where depths increase rapidly from 80 to 130 feet. This is the trolling alley where sailfish, dolphin, wahoo, blackfins and a bit of everything else in the ocean shows up. In winter, there’s some of the world’s best sailfishing between St. Lucie and Palm Beach inlets, with releases of five to 10 fish per day a distinct possibility December through February, particularly after cold fronts roll through. Most dependable tactic is to drift or kite-fish live goggle-eyes or other baitfish. (Put an extra bait down about 60 feet on a downrigger and you’ll probably be grilling wahoo or a smoker king for supper.)

If you’re into grouper and snapper, there are at least 20 wrecks within easy running distance from the two inlets; a book like “Coastal Loran & GPS Coordinates” (813-884-1810) will give you more spots to fish than you can visit in a year, as will any of the charts you buy at local tackle shops. Big jigs, six ounces and up, tipped with fresh-cut fish or even live sand perch, will do the damage.

Those are the good things about these lovely and fertile inlets. The bad thing about both of them is that they are nasty in a blow. St. Lucie is a sort of obstacle course, with one “detached” jetty right in the middle of the inlet. In big swells and poor light, it can be hard to see until you’re almost on top of it. Jupiter has moving shoals at the mouth that migrate with every big blow. Picking a smooth path through can be problematic when the northeast winds howl in winter.

So you pick your days to go outside here, and you don’t try either when strong winds and tides oppose each other. But in the usually benign weather of summer, both are likely to be peaceable enough. And if they’re not, you’ll have to resign yourself to staying inside and tangling with trophy snook and jumbo trout.

FS