Saltwater Fever LLC

10/17/2024

I had 3 dual passenger trips to end August.
1. Polly and her Grandson Yahel got on a hot bite and caught up their limit of Mingo on a 4 hour! Lots of barracuda circling us, but no takers.
2. Double rainbows leaving the dock and it looked like the bite was gonna be really hot! Vince caught this AJ within minutes of us stopping to fish. Unfortunately they made the decision to head home shortly after, as his wife was feeling ill.
3. Dave and Michael got on enough keeper Mingo to have a nice dinner, then we spent some time playing with the big fish!

10/08/2024

Options for those with horses.

SANTA ROSA COUNTY OPENS ATES ARENA AND FAIRGROUNDS TO HORSES BEING EVACUATED IN ADVANCE OF HURRICANE MILTON

MILTON, Fla (Oct 7, 2024) From June Ates Arena..."The June Ates Arena and Santa Rosa County Fairgrounds will be open to Horses and Horsetrailers to stay due to evacuation from areas in South Florida. Please bring generators and portable pens as we are limited to actual hook up sites and numbers."

09/10/2024

Just a heads up! Ft. Pickens will be closing ahead of the storm starting today.

08/19/2024

We made some good memories out there in the past week. I took a few first timers reef fishing and the Vermillion bite is still hot. The big live bait(hard tail) has been hard to come by, but we still hooked some beasts this week on trips dedicated to targeting the big-uns. We were able to horse up a few Ajs and sharks, but we mostly hooked up those unstoppable monsters! With school starting back up, I’ve had a few good weather days off and got to go fishing with some old friends. Great start to August!

08/10/2024

Pictures from August week one, a few 4 hour trips and one 7hr. The Vermilion bite has been steady all week, the nearshore reefs are holding lots of fish just shy of 10”, so we’re having to pick through them. The offshore reefs are mostly keepers, but we’re having to fight Flipper for our take. The triggerfish are hungry out there, but finding a keeper has been tough. A few memorable days this week, manatee sighting, gaff troubles 😂.

08/01/2024

Ft Mcree - August 1

08/01/2024

July photo dump. I took a bit of fishing time off this month for the Blue Angels weekend and my 40th birthday. It was an extremely tough Red Snapper bite this season. Even on days we worked up a good pile of live cigs, we still had a tough time getting quality bites. There was a really good showing of Bonita (Little Tunny) to keep us busy on the ride in and out most days. Even though the snapper bite was tough, there were still plenty of bent poles and happy faces! I got to fish with some really nice people, lots and lots of fish not pictured!

07/07/2024

Beach buzz is about to happen, here’s the plan for Blues week. I still have Thursday available!

07/04/2024

We saw a Manta ray cruising the sandbar on the ride home (video in comments). Late post: This was from May 28th.

07/03/2024

Big and fast!

07/01/2024

We have had some great days out there this past month! Many of our trips takes have been plagued by sharks, but we are still having plenty of fun. I’ve seen some awesome catches and met some really nice people. I’m really hoping this will be known as Shark June not Shark Summer. I bet we caught 15+ Remora today while trying to avoid them, and I know where those come from! There has also been a really good showing of Kings this year, we have caught a few of them recently on light tackle jigs. Zoooom! Thank you all for fishing with me!

05/24/2024

Twin Unicorns!!! Caught about two miles from each other. I very rarely have a trip without predation, mostly by bottlenose and sharks. Yesterday was disheartening and quite frustrating, but today was the complete opposite! I’m always worried that bright moon (full tonight) will shut the morning bite down, i’ve seen it happen a lot. Fortunately all of our reef fish species were feeding, and we fished around a few different pods of bottlenose without any problems. I don’t know how many fish we ended up throwing back today, but we stayed on the bite all day! Unicorn, Amberjack, Vermillion, and Lane snapper for dinner!

05/24/2024

I have never seen predation at every single location like I did yesterday. The dolphins weren’t letting a single vermillion get by them, 2-4 aggressive bottlenose on every spot we fished. We tried running a few miles from the dolphins 5 different times, only to be greeted with a brand new batch of baddies. They leave us the grunts(because they don’t pull off the hook easily), so we put them to use on a few big fish. We also battled a few sharks due to predation, short video in comments.

05/02/2024

It was foggy enough this morning that I had to slow down a few times on the ride out. As we were turning into the gulf we spotted a Bald Eagle right as it took flight from Ft Pickens point. Directly afterwards we stopped and found a few big live baits on the buoy line, and were given about another dozen by some generous guys on the Coastal County Brewery boat. The jacks were very hungry, but there was a pack of dolphin heavily guarding the fish. I believe my crew boated four and lost at least that many to the dolphins. We had a keeper in the box and the dolphins were terrible, so we headed off to catch up some snapper. Luckily there weren’t any dolphins around, so we pulled close to our limit pretty quick. The bite slowed down, so they decided to take one more shot at the jacks then do a bit of trolling. I didn’t see any dolphin around but the jacks just weren’t chewing. We spent around twenty minutes at the end of the day trolling by the battleship and the shoal, we scored with a few Spanish Mackerel. My crew was from NE Texas/SW Arkansas not too far from my birthplace and familiar with the town. Awesome day!

05/02/2024

05/01/2024

103 days for Red Snapper this year!

04/27/2024

These three had to work really hard for their 30 Vermillion, the bottlenose weren’t letting much get by yesterday. After our first stop every spot we moved to had at least one dolphin plucking good fish off the line. We couldn’t target any big fish for catch/release with the murder crew around, so we did a little trolling after we had our limit. No bites on the troll, only saw one school busting the surface.

04/27/2024

It was good weather for us Wednesday, my three man crew had been skunked the previous day on their inshore charter. I promised them that wasn’t going to happen where we were headed, and as promised they were wore out early. They had plenty for dinner, so we decided to spend the rest of the trip cruising the beach trolling for Mackerel. I was told it was a bucket list trip, I believe two of these gentlemen had never been offshore.