A recently read an article describing Florida East Coast fishing, but I think that the best spot of all was overlooked.
The place is not widely known, yet it has fine fresh and salt-water fishing, as well as hunting for squirrels and birds. It is about 20 miles north of Daytona Beach, and extends for only a few miles. I have never seen any other part of the coast like it. At some places deep sloughs lie between huge boulders close inshore. You can stand on the barrier, and at some spots even on the highway, and cast into deep water.
One reason why this location is such a rich feeding ground for fish is that the beach is thick with coquinas - small clam like creatures about the size of a thumbnail. The breakers of the incoming tide sweep hundreds of them out of the sand. They disappear into the sand so quickly that it is hard to catch one with the hand, but with a shovel and sand screen you can soon take a gallon, and they make a most delicious stew. I have seen channel bass 4 or 5 ft. long darting through the breakers for them.
Here at practically all seasons of the year you may catch a great variety of fish in such numbers that it almost ceases to be a sport. Even during a northeaster, when the ocean is too muddy for anything but catfish and shark, you have only to drop back a few hundred yards to the inland waterway which has an inlet at Matanzas and another below Daytona at Mosquito Inlet. Schools of speckled trout, bass, and bluefish pass through from inlet to inlet, and may be taken when the weather is too rough for surf fishing. At some places the waterway widens out into shallow lakes where oysters as large as saucers can be gathered with the hands.
On the beach side the variety is even greater. Some people say that pompano cannot be taken with hook and line; however, I have taken them in the surf near Flagler Beach many times, and consider them the gamest fish that ever struck my tackle. In fact, chances are that this fish will put several kinks into your light wire leader, or even break it.
Many nonresidents who visit the vicinity use live shrimp as bait for trout, but I have had just as good luck with cut shrimp, or even the simplest kind of a plug. The natives make plugs out of clothespins. The pin is somewhat flattened and the slot filled with lead. The plug is painted red and white, and a couple of gang hooks are attached. Many times I've seen trout strike such a plug when they would pass up a live shrimp.
Cut shrimp are used for whiting and bluefish, though I have caught plenty of the latter with nothing but a piece of red cloth on the naked hook. Cut mullet are used for channel bass, which are especially plentiful in the fall of the year. During one flood tide in the vicinity of the boulders mentioned above, I took five channel bass without moving 50 ft. The smallest weighed 20 lb. The next day at the same spot I hooked a tarpon. There wasn't room among the boulders to play that fish on my light tackle, so I lost the monster.
As for flounders and sheepheads, they are so abundant among the boulders that the natives make a business of snagging them on pitchforks, which are jabbed into the bottom around the inshore boulders at low tide.
The day before I returned home, I decided to corn some whiting. Taking a large tub and 2 lb. of shrimp in my car, I drove up the beach about half a mile on the highway which parallels the barrier. I fished back along the beach until I had taken a bucketful of whiting. I took these to the car, emptied them into the tub, and repeated this until I had fished about 3 miles of the beach. By noon, with that 2 lb. of shrimp I had taken 85 lb. of whiting, and a black drum weighing 8 lb.
