Summer Fishing At Its Finest

June 28, 2009 – Summertime Fishing at its Finest

One of the great things about the summer inshore fishing along the Space Coast is the wide variety of species roaming in our shallow-water lagoon system. So much variety, in fact, sometimes it is hard to narrow down our targets during the half-day and full day charters. We had a number of trips this past week where we set out to target one species and wound up catching several others instead. Our first report reflects such an experience.

Fishing with very old and dear friends from Sarasota, Levoie and Melva Hipps, I had some memory-making fishing along with my memory-recalling past. As part of pre-fishing for an upcoming IFA Redfish Tour event in Punta Gorda, I was mostly interested in finding redfish and the Hipps came along hoping to bring a few fillets home for dinner. The excitement of our adventure was an extremely rare 30 minute battle with a 50 lb. cobia hooked on a shallow grass flat outside Bull Bay in Charlotte Harbor and a monster 20 lb. snook boated in the backwaters of Stump Pass in Englewood. I doubt we’ll ever forget either fish. Pictured below are the Hipps with Melva’s trophy snook.




Dave Bailey from Palm Bay, along with sons James and Kyle and father-in-law Buck from New Jersey, spent a great Saturday morning in the Grant area of the Indian River, just north of Sebastian Inlet with Capt. Roland . The morning started with stalking the giant snook which had been frequenting the spoil islands. Instead of snook, the Baileys came home with six fat trout from the islands in the 20 - 27 inch range and several bluefish to boot. After warming up on the sea trout, the Baileys spent the rest of the half-day charter searching for the suddenly elusive line-siders. Pictured below are the results of their search: a 20 lb monster on 10 lb. mono line and a 30 incher which did a great aerial tarpon imitation with four spectacular jumps. "Wait till I show this one off back in Jersey," Buck commented.










Another recent charter with Capt. Roland was Bob Jones and his son-in-law Jeff Loveday of Palm Bay. Taking advantage of the calm waters outside of the inlet, the trio spent the morning looking for tarpon along the beaches. They did manage to jump several, along with big spinner sharks, but lost them all. Bonita harassing the bait pods provided top-water plugging entertainment before a four ft. spinner shark crashed the party. Pictured below is Capt. Roland holding Bob’s shark. (Bob had heard too many bad shark stories and did not want to get any closer to the beast than necessary).




Last Saturday, Capt. Peter guided a family reunion party in the Melbourne Beach stretch of the Indian River. The family, driving down from Daytona beach, was treated to an unbelievable adventure. Chuck Ashley, a great son and brother, is the one who organized the trip to go offshore in the Atlantic. The offshore wind forced the crew into the calmer inshore waters. The day started out targeting tarpon and resulted in two outstanding catches: a 60 inch and 48 inch fish. The rest of the day was equally as exciting as redfish, snook, and trout were caught on the clear-water flats. What a great way to spent part of a family reunion!








The next report involves a familiar faces to Native Sons Fishing Charters: the father and son duo of Chuck and Mason from Orlando. This trip targeted “big fish” only in the Indian River near Melbourne and guide Capt. Peter Deeks hit the bulls-eye with huge snook and tarpon.








It was my pleasure to guide Dave and Maritza from Pennsylvania for a fishing charter in the Grant area recently. This great couple caught an inshore grand slam of redfish, snook, trout, and jack Cravelles. The half-day trip ended perfectly by enjoying a delicious seafood lunch at Captain Hiram’s in Sebastian. The pictures below were taken by Maritza.








Our final report for this week returns to the specie that started this thread: cobia. Capt. Peter, along with good friends Jason and Kenny of Orlando, went offshore to do some scouting when they stumbled across a pod of cobia. Along with catching the cobia, the trio had a blast bow-fishing a couple of kingfish. What a bunch of kooks!
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Posted by Rocky Van Hoose on June 28, 2009 at 02:21:18 PM

Native Sons Fishing Guides
Captain Rocky Van Hoose
321-986-9588
rvanhoose@cfl.rr.com
Captain Brad Jones
321-626-5072
jonesmelb7@bellsouth.net