There are no doubts summertime fishing is here on the First Coast. The weather’s hot, the offshore bite is great, and the coastal zone to the brackish inshore waterways are alive with bait and migratory predators on top of our resident gamefish.
The forecast for the Old School Kingfish Shootout this coming Saturday looks OK for beach fishing; an offshore flow is showing on the models from Friday through Saturday with gusts to 25 knots. Bumpy day to go deep, but the beach should be fine. The last few days, the bait has been hit or miss out of Mayport with some scattered pogies around.
This tournament limiting all competitors to three miles offshore really does level the playing field between the larger offshore boats and single-engine anglers. Anyone can win. The captains meetings are at St. Augustine Fish House and Oyster Bar Friday, June 10, at 4 and 7 p.m. Call 904-544-2262 or visit www.oldschoolkingfish.com if you still want to register. Registration is open through Friday.
Inshore anglers might want to consider the popularity of this tournament when choosing a launching location this weekend. Between Jacksonville’s decision to build a community center in the Mayport ramp parking overflow and the lack of adequate trailer parking at any of the ramps near Vilano, our summer weekends are already a tough parking situation.
The good news is the fishing in the summer always gets good farther upriver as sheepshead and redfish push south up the St. Johns. If you want to stick to the ICW, this might be a perfect weekend for a little bit longer drive to some of the flats farther away from our usual coverage zone of Mayport to Vilano. North or south, you can find some interesting opportunities within an hour’s drive. Going morth, you’ll find miles of more spartina grass flats with a fraction of the angling pressure we see locally. Go south, and you can visually see the blend of temperate to subtropical as the spartina grasses become interspersed with mangroves.
If you haven’t fished Pellicer Flats in the Palm Coast area, the ramp at Bings Landing is one of a kind. This is an area of mixed-grass flats and mangrove-lined creeks that pushes way back off the main ICW channel. Bings Landing sits directly across from the flats on the east side of the ICW just a few miles south of Matanzas inlet. The ramp has large oak trees shading a preserved archeological site, with plenty of dock space and, saving the best for last, this ramp comes with a bonus of, hands down, one of the best BBQ restaurants in Florida. The drifting wafts of smoke coming off the huge Lang smokers are your first hints of BBQ done right.
Built overlooking the ICW, the building has a large screened deck space with incredible sunset views. The crew at Captains BBQ is led by Capt. Chris Herrera, who keeps a keen eye on quality control when he dips into the restaurant between charters. You can’t go wrong with any of the BBQ, but don’t miss out on the beet salad – and if there’s a special, they never disappoint. For any readers with a sweet tooth, the desserts are equally enticing, with an impressive rotating array of homemade cheesecakes and sweets cooked up by one of the owners. By car or by boat, they have plenty of parking for both, and I can’t recommend this trip enough, even as just a day cruise along the ICW.