Fished the surf for couple hours Thursday morning along beach marker 36.

Wind was light SW, offshore smooth, surf still a bit sandy & 2ft'ers but confused, (meaning not timed equally & some times stacked or cross moving)

Bit too messy for topwater, so silver spoon time.

Lot's of action, only ID'ed Skippies that hooked up. Couple head shakers,possibly trout, but came unbuttoned.

One Skippy was a bad Mo-Fo, put on a real show, probably 28" & 5-6lb. Stud Skip fo-shur.

12 Skippies at least brought close enough to be counted as caught, plenty other's hit, hooked up, & unhooked. I prefer they release themselves.

Fun time, but breakers were getting worse instead of smoothing out, so headed in in 2 hours.

South Jetty observations

They've done a lot in the last 7 months as well as since Harvey all along; not all of it good for fishermen.

The sloping granite blocks channel side in many places make landing a fish a real adventure, forget about getting close to the water for any reason.

They've poured and leveled several areas for walking and shored up a few areas that were badly cracked & damaged but need to do more filling in.

Easier to get a wheeled chest towards the end, less granite gaps, but still some carrying has to happen.

Don't know if the work is done, if not & they continue to put blocks angled down to the water, it will severely restrict the landing of fish and getting close to the water like pre-Harvey allowed. Not good overall, but fishermen will figure things out & I'll be there to see, inquire, and steal their ideas. As I told the 4 young men fishing at the end & first time on the jetty, nothing I mentioned or showed you is my idea, someone showed me, I observed, or just noticed and did the same. Plenty folks took what I use & did the same, aka "T.O.O's Famous Slip Cork Rig". Often copied, often imitated, always welcome to do.

If you've read this far, they were catching upper slot & just over reds along the jetty channel side using mullet; cut & live finger. Some by boat (they were close enough to cast into, some by folks on the rocks. By time started back it was 12:45 pm, & had seen 12 or more reds hooked & broke off or landed, most of them in the last hour out there. Got to be a reason why? hmmm?

Nice post.

Willie .... great post. Just an FYI some of us discovered the "slip cork" rig back in the 70's and yes it was there on the end of the south jetty at Port A. We caught reds using live pin perch caught in between bait losses.

I'm not sure how you rig yours but we usually had a bottom section for the hook and swivel about 3' long. Then an egg sinker (1/2 -3/4 oz) above the swivel. Then the cork with a bead above it on a section of mono that might range from 5' to a long as 10' or 12'. To attach it to our main line we used a 4 turn uni to uni which you could reel through your guides and cast..

This rig works for Reds, Jacks, Tarpon and Ling. If you could make it to the end of the north jetty you might even snag a legal red snapper or two.

TT, same basic rig, piggies caught out there iif didn't want to carry live bait in bucket to the end or almost the end. Usually a shorter leader for us, but everything else about the same. Broke off on reds getting into the rocks more times than want to admit & broke a couple rods as well. When water is clean green we'd throw out a ways & usually get cut off on kings. Couple times they'd stay on long enough to have a bit of fun. Never brought one in that type fishing w/o wire.

We had a redfish alley that usually was good for 6-10 fish a trip on the right phase. Since Harvey & the new rock positioning, not sure what we'll figure out except we think we've got another stretch that seems to hold reds pretty good, just harder to fish nowadays.

Haven't yet been able to fish the right phase this year for jetty reds.