Fishing the Panama City Beach County Pier in October – Part 2
Eugene L. 12.27.23
As I said in the first part, putting in the time goes a long way when it comes to catching fish on the pier. I missed the king mackerel bite by just around an hour, the first day of my. So to not repeat that, I planned on getting to the pier early this second. I made sure to be in the pier parking lot well before the sun came up. It was around 5 am when I started loading up my pier cart for the day. While the days were nice and warm these early mornings were surprisingly chilly, especially with the sustained winds. So I donned my Grundens charter bib and a hoodie to protect me from the cool wind and keep me warm till it warmed up later in the day. After that, the cart was loaded and I made my way to the pier house, there I paid my $6 and started my 1/4 mile walk to the end of the pier. The first thing I noticed though was how many people were also fishing this morning, which is odd for a Wednesday on a non-holiday week. I guess word had spread quick about the crazy king bite the day before.
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- Fishing the Panama City Beach County Pier in October – Part 1
I didn’t really have to worry about bait this morning having a 1lb of frozen cigar minnows in my kill bag, but even still fresh live bait is always better than a cigsicle. So once I got to the end of the pier I dropped down a fresh sabiki rig trying to catch some live bait, but this was to no avail besides some tiny cigar minnows and some hardtail. The bait wasn’t really here like the day before, to make matters worse I even lost a brand new sabiki to a pelican that flew into it from under the pier. Some people were throwing plugs already hoping for some kings in the dark, I did that once and decided I’d rather not with so many people casting over each other. Finally, once it was first light, and we could see the water, people started throwing out baits for kings. Some of the crowd still kept throwing lures though, maybe cause of the lack of bait.
Everyone was excited hoping for a repeat of the day before, where limits of kings were caught within the first hour of the day. But time kept ticking and the fish weren’t showing up, there was a Spanish mackerel here, a Bonita there, and maybe a ladyfish or a remora. But the kings were a no-show this morning, we did have a rush of Spanish and bluefish come through and eat every bait they could for 15 minutes, but the dolphins came and shut that down real quick. As soon as the trio of them showed up the bite died. We did have a cool showing of the big pier lurker barracuda attacking a ladyfish that got hooked on a plug. It came out from under the pier blowing up on it and instantly cutting it in half. It swam off swallowing the tail of the ladyfish. The angler kept the head with the plug in the water for the barracuda hoping when it came back it would get hooked. It did come and grab the head but when he tried setting the hook none of the trebles found any purchase in the barracuda’s mouth. Disappointed by missing his shot at the barracuda, the fisherman unhooked the ladyfish and dropped it over the side, which a big loggerhead sea turtle promptly grabbed and ate.
The barracuda was the last exciting thing for the next couple of hours on the end of the pier. As time went on, more and more people started to leave, eventually, there was plenty of space on the once-crowded front rail of the pier. With there being more space and no luck with fishing baits I thought it was time to test out some new plugs I got from Berkley Fishing. I tied on a Berkley Saltwater Juke 128, a lipped plug. You need lipped plugs on the pier due to how high you are over the water. The action on the Juke was good, with it digging in well even with the steep angle of the line. I kept casting it out as far as I could then working it back in an erratic jerking motion. The lure was great, but if they had a slow sink model or a long cast it’d be even better for the pier.
While I started off fishing on heavy 80lb fluorocarbon after one bluefish and getting my line nicked, I switched over to 20lb seven-strand wire real quick. Which was a good thing I did, that first bluefish turned into a frenzy. A massive school hung around the end of the pier for a few hours. While they weren’t what we were targeting, they were still fish and fought when you hooked them. Sometimes that’s all you need to have a good time, especially with how dead it had been that morning.
The bite stayed consistent as the day went on, they’d be in a frenzy for a while eating anything you threw at them then calm down for a little bit, then start right back up. This cycle kept going on for the rest of the day, anyone who wanted bluefish limited out easily. There were even some bonus schools of Spanish mackerel and Bonita that would come through. They never stuck around like the bluefish did but at least one or two would be caught when they showed up. With the bluefish and Spanish I had a pretty solid bag of fish for what started off as such a slow day. For those wondering about the lone ladyfish, I kept that for a specific recipe that I had not made before in mind, that catch and cook will be coming pretty soon.
After more bluefish than I knew what to do with on my medium tackle I wanted to switch it up to some light tackle fun with a small hex jig on my light inshore setup. So I cast it out at a frenzy of the bluefish and immediately a seagull flew into my line. I tried flipping the line off when there was still some clack but it ended up getting wing wrapped. I had to bring it up to untangle it. I threw a rag on its head so it would calm down and stop trying to bite me. Once I got the line off the wing and took the rag off its head the bird flew off. This was the 4th time this trip I snagged a bird. The pier is covered in seabirds this time of year, all of them trying to get as fat as possible on the baitfish that use the pier for shelter. They know the winter is coming so for them this might be their last chance for a while for a good meal.
After the seagull fiasco, I did get some bluefish on the light tackle to fill out my limit. So now being limited out I couldn’t target them anymore so I started fishing for kings again. The bait situation improved so I had some live bait to fish as well. I kept free-lining live cigar minnows until 4 or 5 pm but nothing came of it. The wind was starting to die down as well, so we saw it as a sign to call it quits on chasing the kings. So I decided to start heading off the pier and get some dinner. But on the way off the pier, I saw George fishing near the 1st T of the pier. He had left earlier saying he too was going to leave for dinner, but he saw Spanish mackerel being caught and had stopped. So I did the same, the Spanish mackerel made a last-minute showing right as the sun was going down. They were hitting small jerkbaits rigged on bubble rigs, so I did that as well and got a few more Spanish for the cooler right as the sun was going down.
The Spanish were pretty thick until the sun was almost out of sight, then it switched to mainly ladyfish being caught. While they fight well, they can be a bit of a pain to deal with. I decided it was better to use the last of the light to gut my mackerel now and rinse off all my gear with fresh water. After which I really did leave, no stopping this time even if they were catching fish. Even with that rough start Day 2 of fishing at the County Pier wasn’t too bad. While I had called them annoying on Day 1 the bluefish really saved the day from being a bust.
