With just a week left of autumn, it’s feeling a bit like summer. That’s Florida for you. When we have unseasonable weather like this, the fishing gets a bit confused, and in this case, things are in rewind mode. There are huge schools of tiny baitfish from the river mouths to the beaches, and more than a few bigger baitfish around. The kingfish have been moving back north, and a few blacktip, spinner and bull sharks have showed up along our coastline. The mullet started to get into spawning mode last week but abruptly stopped, probably because the warming water shut them down. Cobia, which are usually way out in the Gulf or south of us by this time of year, have been around in targetable numbers both inshore and offshore. There are still snook in the surf. And the trout bite, which was oddly great all summer, has been very tough for the past few weeks.

What does all this mean? Maybe the Mayans were right, but more likely it’s just a temporary trend. If you’ll recall, a couple years ago when we had that horrible January freeze it was preceded by a very warm spell. Hopefully that’s not what we’ll see this year, but winter is going to get here eventually. Probably. Unless the world ends tomorrow.