Jace Lacoss (left) with a bull redfish caught off a St. Mary’s jetty.
September 24, 2024
By Terry Lacoss
Hidden Gems : Roads less traveled & waters less fished in Florida. Florida Sportsman magazine’s 'Hidden Gems’ project in the August-September 2024 issue featured 14 hotspots for Florida’s hunters and anglers, from the Keys to the Panhandle. Today, we highlight the St. Mary’s inlet in Northeast Florida, where big jetty gamefish will test your gear.—Terry Lacoss, Florida Sportsman magazine contributing editor.Rock Star Fishing Northeast Florida provides a case study in how to catch big fish within a short boat ride.
Florida Sportsman's 'Hidden Gems.' If you are new to saltwater fishing, or just wish to catch that big fish of a lifetime, several inlets along Florida’s Northeast Florida coastline just might be your best option. The fishy waters of the St. Mary’s, Jacksonville, St. Augustine, and Daytona inlets all are protected by large jetty rocks, creating a magnet for big gamefish.
Although fishing action is excellent year-round, some of the better action and largest fish are caught during the warmer months from the beginning of April through November.All you need to do is anchor safely along these fishy jetty rocks and drop down a barbed chunk of cut bait and hang on!
Roland Martin plays a big St. Mary’s Inlet redfish that took a soft plastic swim bait rigged on a 1/2-ounce jig. Big jetty gamefish include tarpon, redfish, black drum, king mackerel, cobia and more. However, if you wish to catch dinner, floating a live shrimp next to these rock jetties will produce excellent-eating seatrout, flounder, and puppy drum. Barbing a fiddler crab, oyster, or small piece of fresh shrimp on a small saltwater hook will produce sheepshead almost any day—and here in Northeast Florida those sheepshead get big, weighing to 10 pounds.
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Amelia Island’s Capt. Danny Flynn has fine-tuned his jetty fishing tactics, often concentrating on the incoming tides to produce good catches for his charter guests.
“I prefer a morning incoming tide where the water clarity is cleaner and the flooding tide running over the very end of the south jetty rocks attracts excellent big fish action,” Flynn said. “I typically anchor just off from the southside of the very tip of the south jetty rocks and fish on the bottom with live or dead menhaden.”
Many jetty fishermen in the Amelia Island and Fernandina Beach area will navigate out from the St. Marys Inlet and run north along the beaches of Cumberland Island, Georgia, where menhaden are easy to cast net (Georgia fishing license is required). Live mullet are also an option and can be cast netted along the edges of the Intracoastal Waterway that connects to the St. Mary’s Inlet.
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Jetty regulars like Danny Flynn have been facing a huge problem with the increase in shark stocks during the past few fishing seasons. It’s been bad at the St. Mary’s jetties. Same can be said for other inlet fishermen along Florida’s Northeast Coast.
“I have completely stopped chumming because it attracts too many sharks,” Flynn said. “Instead I will just fish on the bottom with live or dead fish while targeting big fish like tarpon, cobia, and bull redfish.”
Flynn fishes solely with medium heavy spinning gear with spools filled with 65-pound braided fishing line. A sliding fishfinder, with a clip, is threaded onto his main line with a bank weight attached. The size of the weight depends on the strength of the tide, using just enough weight to hold barbed baits right on the bottom. A 50-pound black barrel swivel is then tied to the main line, followed by 3 or 4 feet of 60-pound fluorocarbon shock leader. Finally, a size 8/0 circle hook is tied to the business end of the shock leader. Live or dead menhaden are then barbed from the bottom of the mouth, out through the top of the mouth and fish dead on the bottom.
Big kingfish are a summer specialty at the inlet tidelines. “I use fairly heavy tackle for good reasons,” Flynn said. “There are so many sharks these days that it is often hard for my customers to reel in their fish before nearby sharks eat their catch. I believe our inlet and jetty fishing is unbalanced right now with the increase in sharks, which is becoming a major problem.”
Captain Flynn has guided his St. Mary’s jetty charters to red drum measuring up to a whopping 63 inches, tarpon over the 150-pound mark, 50-pound-plus cobia, and black drum weighing over 50 pounds.
Livebait fishing at many of Northeast Florida rock jetty inlets also produces fast-striking king mackerel, Spanish mackerel, and cobia. While some of the largest fish are caught while chumming at anchor off the tip of the jetty rocks, slow-trolling is also very productive.
Live-bait trolling is accomplished with 20-pound fishing tackle with a 4-foot length of 40-pound brown, single strand wire leader. A pair of size 4, 4X brown treble hooks are haywire wrapped and rigged in stinger fashion to handle the lightning fast strike of the king mackerel.
Aidan Flynn with a tarpon at the St. Mary’s jetty. During late spring, giant black drum will be spawning at many of Northeast Florida jetty rocks and can weigh over the 100-pound mark. Fishing at night and during a full moon, dead on the bottom with combination baits of conch, large shrimp, and a quarter blue crab is key.
Close to the jetty rocks, casting suspending minnow type plugs like the MirrOlure or swimbaits in the white and red color pattern will produce seatrout, redfish, blues, flounder and more.
Jettied inlets like ours in Northeast Florida were built mainly to keep the channels from filling in, and for protecting mariners. Little did the builders realize the many benefits they would hold for fishermen!
