From Ron Brooks,
Your Guide to Saltwater Fishing.
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People are saying that global warming is beginning to have an effect on the world. If this fall and winter are any indication of things to come, we may very well see sailfish and dolphin being caught off the coast on Maine before too long!

The weather has been a lot warmer than normal, so much so that temperature induced migration has yet to occur, Take this past couple of weeks as an example.

We fished the Northeast Florida coast offshore from St. Augustine and Jacksonville and really caught fish. Red snapper and grouper, that normally would be moving with water temperatures are being taken in record numbers and big sizes.

My son and I had been catching cobia over the near shore and the offshore wrecks. Schools numbering fifteen to twenty fish were not an uncommon sight. We caught a number of these cobia, as did other boats in the same area. Mixed in with the cobia bite, were grouper and red snapper. And, as an indication of the still warm water, barracuda were still hanging out over the wrecks, looking for a meal.

On one recent trip there were at least eight five to six foot cudas under the anchored boat. It was a challenge to get a good fish to the boat without being eaten by one of them. One nice mangrove snapper that I estimated to be in the eight to ten pound range was grabbed about ten feet down as I tried in vane to get it to the boat intact. A cuda took the whole fish. A red snapper - one of the biggest I ever hooked - also did not make it intact. I never thought a cuda would grab a fish that big, but grab it he did. I fought the cuda under the boat for a couple of minutes until the shook his head really hard and sliced the snapper half behind its head. What was left of the snapper weighed fourteen pounds and it was less than half the fish.

Even on bad days, the fish are willing and eating. Saturday found two boats of us on some live bottom about 22 miles offshore. We were on fish and it looked as if we would get some good ones. But a scuddy, rainy sky brought some heavy northeast winds as a cold front came through. We headed in, fearful of the growing seas, only to run into blue skies and calmer winds about nine miles from shore. By then the pressure had risen and the fish had developed lock jaw. We think we did the right thing by heading in, but all of us wished we had stuck it out once we saw the weather calm.

All of this is to say that the fish are out there folks! From the Carolinas to South Florida, fish are there and they are eating. This time of year the weather makes you more cautious and you have to pick your days, but when you can get out, you can bet on a good catch.

Whether this is a freak warm spell or a forerunner of global warming is up for a lot of discussion. Whatever the cause, it means some really great fishing without the really hot weather!