Florida Fishing - Veterans Memorial Pier

My brother-in-law, Joe Koeman, and I found some time to get a little fishing in while we were in Titusville, Fl.  The first day we stopped at a bait shop in the area and asked the guy inside if there was any good fishing areas near by.  He told us to wade out knee deep from the shore right behind his shop, cast out a shrimp on a hook, and wait.  He assured us we wouldn't be disappointed.  Well it turns out we were, and the fact that he told us that we wouldn't be made it even worse. 

After casting toward several jumping mullets, not knowing that they are impossible to catch because they are herbivores, we gave up and went about two miles down the road to a public pier.  We went all the way to the end of the pier and the water was still only 2 feet deep.  Have you ever gone fishing in a spot and known that it was hopeless?  It didn't last long before we hung it up for the day.

The next day we drove about 15 minutes from our condo to a pier we found the night before while we were out to dinner with Joe and Theresa.  It was called the Veterans Memorial Pier, and it had fish.  We caught several Sea Trout around 12" long.  Keepers are 15" to 20" and we could not seem to catch anything over 12", which is a shame because I've heard they are good eat'in.  Anyway, it was still fun to do some catching instead of just fishing.  We also caught several other varieties; Blue Fish, Puffers, Jacks, and others that I couldn't tell you what they were. 

Sea Trout

Jack

After the sun goes down the pier fills up with shrimpers.  Shrimpers are people who come out at night with nets that have 25’ long handles, and they attempt to catch shrimp one at a time by scooping them up.   I never knew there was such thing as shrimping, but it was very interesting to see.  They actually throw lights into the water so they can see when a shrimp comes swimming past.  A single shrimper will have anywhere up to 5 lights in the water at a time, so with several shrimpers lining the pier, the water is illuminated all the way down both sides of the pier.  It is a sight to see, and to top it off, every once in a while you will see a manatee or two go swimming through the lights.  It is comparable to smelt dipping but with nicer weather and better scenery.