"Fishing in The Gumbo!" Homosassa 5/19/2018

Ruff One · May 2018

Seas loved excellent, and they were. Wind was perfect. Nice cloud cover, seems like a perfect day to enjoy the day fishing nearshore out of Homosassa. Well, until we stopped at some nearshore rock piles. Looked in the water and the "Gumbo" was thick!! Looked at Gail, and said "what do we do now"? We decided to go ahead with our plan to fish that spot, see what happens.
Tide was moving nice,but the gumbo was flowing right along with everything else. As the flow lessened, the water started to clear, and right before slack tide water cleared up. Go figure! I mean cleared right up. I guess the gumbo settled to the bottom?
Then for the next two hours the fish showed up and we had a decent fishing adventure. First the grouper started biting, and Gail hooks into one really nice shallow water beauty. Released and spot marked!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6030354/uploads/editor/n4/kwrjs3yoyd1x.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6030354/uploads/editor/rx/mrwq9myc7tlq.jpg

Gail hooked another grouper and as he starts off the bottom, up comes a nice cobe with him. Unhook the grouper and Gail gets another pinfish in the water , and its not long and she hooked to a 1/4in short cobia. Been trying to get her a legal one this year, but we'll have to wait till the next outing. No pic, camera malfunction. Water is still clear, but the tide turns and as it picks up speed, we have two things to deal with . Sharks(big ones) and the dreaded "Gumbo"! Losing rigs to sharks and trying to fish with that crap all over everything gets the best of us, and we throw in the towel!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6030354/uploads/editor/2h/thhvnxjq04oo.jpg

Call it a day, and head in. Fishing would be good, even with the catch and release, but this "Gumbo" has to run it course and leave. Even with the mess, we still had a nice chum slick with major amount of bait hanging out behind the boat. Ballyhos, bluerunners, macks, and a surprise , some catfish.
Enjoy.

barhopper51 · May 2018

Nice to know they're around even with the gumbo.

Salty Dawg44 · May 2018

Made the best of what could have been a crappy day. Save a few for me, I'm on my way back.

Jim311 · May 2018

I tried yesterday for cobia near CK and while I didn't have problems with gumbo the bite seemed terrible.

Doc Stressor · May 2018

Butch, Barb, and I ran into it again yesterday down south, west of Arapika. Also in 30 ft off of Homosassa at the south end of the Parking Lot. We could troll, but we kept needing to clear the junk off our lines and wire leaders. It looked like it was starting to decay last weekend, but the stuff yesterday was fibrous and tough to remove. There must have been another recent bloom. They did some diving and said that it was all over the bottom. The fish are there, providing that you can put up with the stuff.

butchbal · May 2018

The gumbo was pretty much everywhere we went in 35' or less. We stopped in 10 ft to retrieve an anchor that had hung last Feb. The water was a little hazy but not to bad. Had no trouble finding the anchor, the chain had become wrapped around a rock. Out deeper its clear on the top and gumbo on the bottom 10 ft. We made dive in 30 ft and followed a ledge for a few hundred feet. I could have shot as many keeper gag as I wanted. I shot a hogfish and instantly had 4 gags converge on it before I could even retrieve the shaft. The good news is that there were also quit a few red grouper just shy of being legal, next year they will be keepers. We cut our dive short because the visibility sucked and trolled a few spots. Caught a few gags everywhere we went and put our new Nomad plugs down. Ended up going home with 1 nice king mackerel Lee hooked and two hogfish for dinner. We probably threw back 5 or 6 gags. The seas were flat as can be, light breeze, water temps 77 to 79 with moderate current. We should have quit 30 minutes before we did because we lost two expensive plugs on the "last pass" before going home. We think spanish may have been hitting the leader swivels that were trailing a beard of gumbo. I look forward to the gumbo disappearing, hopefully soon.

Ruff One · May 2018

So, that's what happened to that anchor! We didn't even try to troll. I just knew it would be a mess. There seems to be a lot of gags, even in shallow. Macks are my sworn enemies, lost one of my favorite firetiger rapalas last week. I am for " Catch more Macks, make gallons of smoked fish dip". Go get em!!