Mosquito Lagoon Reds Finicky

Mosquito Creek Outdoors Indian River Lagoon Coast Fishing Report
By Captain Tom Van Horn

Well, the cold windy weather has finally been replaced by Chamber of Commerce weather filled with bright sunny skies and temperatures reaching the 80 degree mark. Although the weather has been nice, the catching still remains hot and cold.

On the freshwater side, there are sill some American shad around. On several trips to the St. Johns River over the past week we managed to catch shad on both spin and fly, along with a mixed bag of various species of pan fish, catfish, and largemouth bass. The shad numbers have begun to dwindle and the best run in recent history will be over soon. We can only hope conservation measures will continue to improve the shad fishery, and we will see the same level of spawning fish return next December. So, if you are like me, I would break out the fly rod and take another shot at the shad while there are still here.

Kayak Frank,s 43-inch Redfish

On sever trips to the Mosquito Lagoon this past week, one scouting trip and one charter, we found the water level rising a bit and more fish than you could shake a stick of dynamite at, because if we had a case of dynamite we'd been able to fill a tractor trailer.

On the scouting trip, myself and my good friend Mark Blyth located four different schools of large redfish, so I though I'd be in good shape for my charter the next day, not! After picking up my party around 7am, we were on a school of big redfish within 30 minutes. We stayed on fish for the next seven hours, and we couldn't get a single redfish to eat. The schooling fish swam over, under, and around our baits throughout the day and we used every natural bait you can think of, live mullet, cut mullet, live pinfish, dead pinfish, live shrimp, dead shrimp, whole live crabs, chunks of crab, you name it we through it, with not one bite, very very frustrating. The highlight of the day was watching a 43-inch redfish drag a kayak Frank around for about 30 minutes.

If this weather holds for a few more days the cobia run should commence, but as of now the run is late, so when it dose kick off it will most likely be short lived.

As always, if you have any questions or need more information, please contact me.

Good luck and good fishing,

Captain Tom Van Horn
Mosquito Coast Fishing Charters
407-416-1187 on the water
407-366-8085 land line
www.irl-fishing.com

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