BlueWater Outriggers Fishing Report 8-29-2025
It’s been a nice quiet week here in our little fishing town of Port St. Joe, Florida. And folks, I’m not going to lie, that is just the type of week that I love. Now that I’m a bit older I’ve found that I’ve come to appreciate a routine life, the simplicity and familiarity that comes along with small town living. Take Thursdays for instance. After getting to work at the best fishing store ever, I’ll pick up my little boy from his daycare and we’ll go to the Piggly Wiggly for our groceries. Before we go in, I’ll dig through Pop-Tart and Goldfish crumbs in the cupholder to find a quarter so he can get his gumball from the machine. He’ll then run and try to find Ms. Lisa who’ll inevitably hand him a lollipop much to his delight. After we buy our juice and Texas Toast Wonder Bread, it’s off to the Paul Gant BBQ trailer for a pound of pulled pork to go. He’ll slip out of the truck and show his cute face because he knows the kind lady behind the sliding window is going to give him a free bag of Lays Potato Chips. The next few hours will be spent at home, he playing on his tablet while I wash dishes and make his dinner. This has become our beat the heat routine. By now it’s 6:30 and the sun is starting to make its way down. He’ll be giddy with excitement as he watches me try to find his socks and shoes that he has thrown off in the most random of places, and if the cat hasn’t batted the socks underneath the couch I can usually find everything in about two minutes. I’ll load up his toys and my fishing rods and we head off on our daily small-town adventure. Our first stop will be the local boat launch. It’s beautiful there in the near twilight watching the last of the boats come in with their catch of bay scallops. The season is still open until the 24th and it has continued to be a good one. The boy will walk the sun-bleached gray wooden dock franticly waving at boat passengers and relishing the sight of a boat being loaded onto a trailer, while I throw the cast net for small minnows. We’ll then drive the backroads past the welcome center and by the old light house, circle the fountain, turn left at “Daddy’s work” and make our way to the marina. Ol’ Tommy will be there, fishing his corner, and Gary and his wife will be there too; you could make a bet on it. They’ll take it in good stride as the three-year-old, unawares of their serenity noisily races down the wooden ramp to the marina wall. If that’s not small-town routine, I don’t know what is. We had a ball tossing those little LY Minnows as close to rocks as we dared. Along with a couple of slow to the take flounders, I had a few mangroves and juvenile Gags pound the tar out of those minnows. I had rigged them with #6 circle hook and a ½ oz sinker.
Now folks, I know my small-town routine with average sized mangroves and flounder may not be all that exciting to you, so let’s talk about something that should get you a bit more intrigued. The Reds are back in business! I had heard rumors, but I now know it for a fact. Along with our local guides putting their clients on nice Reds, look at the monsters (seen above) caught by Tom Fuller and Rei Hoang just yesterday. These bulls were pushing over 41” and both caught on the same day! Tom and Rei are two of the nicest people you’ve ever met; I had the pleasure of meeting them when they came to get geared up in Bluewater. Congrats Tom and Rei on the nice catch!
That will wrap things up for this week folks. I hope to see you out there while I keep on enjoying the small-town life here in Port St. Joe.