Playing Jax | 2019 Season Premier of Flats Class

WRITTEN BY STAFF WRITER

Flats Class launches their 2019 season by throwing the kitchen sink in Jacksonville. Despite the loss of hard bait and testy weather they end up getting all kinds of action in Northeast Florida.

Jacksonville is an unbelievable city. It has a great riverwalk area downtown with laid-back waterfront pubs and seafood grills. The Jacksonville fishing scene is also incredible. The season 13 premiere features flounder, redfish, bluefish, and a whole lot of speckled trout.

 There are some truly stellar trout fisheries in Florida. From the Indian River Lagoon, to Charlotte Harbor and up to Citrus County you can catch some beautiful trout. C.A. argues though, that Jacksonville takes the cake. “You can catch 150 trout here a day. It’s just nuts.” Jacksonville never disappoints and it really is one of the best fisheries for hard bait fishing. 

Being on the other side of the state, C.A. needed a bit of local knowledge and fishes with Eddie Cabler, a hard-core Jacksonville angler who fishes about 200 days out of the year. When it comes to hard bait the guys are throwing the MirrOlip in both the lake and the mouth of the St. Johns River. It’s a fantastic lure for vibration and flash and runs about 3-5 ft deep. Other baits used in the series include the Catch 2000 and Top Dog Jr. Top water was calling these fish all the way to the top in as much as 12 ft of water. If you can imagine the trout looking up and seeing the hard bait on top of the water silhouetted against a silver sky, that’s what gets it done.

When it comes to fishing structure, Jacksonville is at the top of the list for that too. There is structure everywhere. Most of it is covered under water because of the big tides, but it’s there and so are the fish. 

Flounder are a great fish to target in structure. They aren’t exactly hydro-dynamic, so they’re not looking to work too hard or chase their food down. They’re waiting for something to get close enough where they can just strike it. If you’re fishing for flounder you need structure and current. For the structure fishing C.A. & Eddie were using the Zman DieZel ChatterBait and a ChatterBait Elite series head with an added DieZel minnow tail. ChatterBait is a fantastic lure for vibration and flash. It really delivers not only on flounder but on other species that like to hug up to structure too. 

Have questions for CA? Leave a comment below.