By Captain Tom Van Horn
First and foremost, let me start this report by wishing everyone a very blessed Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving is the time of year when we step back from our fast paced lives just for a moment, take a deep breath, and count our many blessings. As an angler, publisher and fishing guide here on Florida's Space Coast, I'm extremely blessed by a great family, friends, clients, weather and great fishing. I'm thankful for my freedom and the abundance of opportunities available and I'm extremely grateful to those serving our country both here and abroad, past and present, for the gifts we enjoy every day, God bless.
Second, I must start this report by apologizing for tardiness as I'm just wrapping up my 27th week long annual pilgrimage to the Sebastian Inlet area. It may be hard to fathom that someone in the fishing industry would take a fishing vacation, but I'm already missing it and looking forward to next year's quest.
Mike and Becky in the New Mosquito Bay Skiff
Mike and Becky seeing red on Mosquito Bay
You may recall from my last report, my primary boat "Three Quarter Time" is out of service for an engine overhaul and facelift, and I was granted the opportunity by the nice folks at Central Florida Marine in Maitland, Florida to field test their new Mosquito Bay Skiff on my Sebastian vacation. Well, although the Mosquito Bay Skiff is a smaller lighter boat than my 1995 Maverick Master Angler, I was extremely pleased by its overall quality, efficiency and it performance. Drawing only six inches of water, the Buzz tracked very well and it was easy to pole in shallow with absolutely no haul slap against the wind. Powered by a 70 horsepower Yamaha four stroke engine, the skiff was surprisingly quick out of the hole, a comfortable ride and very fuel efficient. During my five days of fishing with three anglers in the boat, we burned only seven gallons of fuel. To sum up my experience, the folks at Mosquito Bay Skiff have designed a winner built for today's market. The Buzz is a quality built well performing light technical polling skiff. It is both practical and efficient and with a base price of 20,000 dollars, it's affordable. The Mosquito Bay Skiff is a built factory direct and can be made to order, and its built right here in Orlando. I would suggest if you are in the market for a new boat, it is worth a visit to Central Florida Marine to see what the Buzz is all about.
Now for my Sebastian vacation report: Although I've been hearing good reports on flounder catches in and around the inlet, we caught only a few gulf flounder and only one pompano in five days of fishing. The water temperature is still too high, and the flounder and pompano are not moving through the inlet yet. From my first sentence, you may think fishing was tough, but the beautiful thing about Sebastian is there's always something to catch, and catching we did. Throughout the week, the sea trout and redfish bite was off the hook as we averaged 50 plus fish days all week. Most of our sea trout were taken early in the morning fishing in close to the spoil islands lining the ICW north of the inlet. Not only were they biting well, they were mostly upper slot and over slot fish, taken on Hook-up Pompano Jigs tipped with shrimp and DOA CAL Jigs with a Woodies Rattle inserted. It's always the case, when sea trout are out of season, the big ones are chewing. As for redfish, we averaged 10 reds a day, with the majority coming from the Black Point area south of the inlet up close to the mangroves using the same baits.
Becky's Sebastian Redfish
Rory's Respectable Sea Trout
Captain Tom's Sebastian Trout
All in all, the weather was great, the fish were chewing and I couldn't have asked for a better vacation on the water with family and friends.
Happy Thanksgiving and God Bless,
Captain Tom Van Horn
Mosquito Coast fishing Charters
(407) 416-1187 on the water
http://www.irl-fishing.com
For all of your holiday shopping needs, visit Mosquito Creek Outdoors in Apopka where everything in the fishing department is 25% off through Christmas. For more details, visit http://www.mosquitocreek.com.
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