Fishing Report - Snook & Trout 6-6-14

Friday June 6, 2014   Launched 7:00PM
Weather: Hot 87 deg.
Clear with scattered storms in the distance
wind: SSE winds, 10-12mph +/-
Tide: incoming High at 8:30PM
Target Fish: Redfish, Trout Fish

caught: (1) Trout- short, (2)  Snook

There was not a whole bunch of planning for this trip. Basically, I had some time and have been receiving some good reports so we grabbed our boats and gear and headed to Flagler for some topwater action. 

The wind was blowing pretty hard and right down the river. It held the tide down a little and we had to fish the tail end of the incoming which is less than ideal but there was a little action going on. There was plenty of bait around though.

We fished a natural creek drain that had a bunch of small drains and forks, etc. We picked up one trout, 2 Snook and had one other fish on that tore off.

We were using a 5m18 Mirrolure. Had the tide been right I feel like we would have had some real action. We were at least able to get out of some of the wind and work some of the bugs out of the equipment.

Here's a little video from the trip.......

Larry S.

Fishing Report - Mosquito Lagoon Area 5-18-13

Sat. May 18, 2013
Weather: 68 deg. at launch, 85 at landing
Mostly clear to partly cloudy later in the day
wind: light east winds, 8-10mph +/- at noon
Target Fish: Redfish, Trout
Fish caught: (2) Trout- short, (13-14)  Redfish -upper slot

I fished with my friend Rick Edwards this morning. He has never fished any grass flats, sand holes, etc. and was depending on me to put us on the fish.  We paddled over a mile and a quarter to get to a big grass flat that turned out to be basically dead! The flat was really skinny and the sand holes had a skim of dead grass or some kind of fungus that is growing on the grass, covering the bottom. We paddled all the way to the far end and it was all the same. The worst part was that there was no bait and we did not even jump a red in all our travels there.

We headed to another flat from there and eventually found a decent school of tailing reds. I pulled one 20" fish out of them before they quit tailing.I caught that one on a live bait.

Eventually we moved to the other side of an island and found a big sand hole and the bite was on! We ended up catching three doubles and somewhere around 13-14 upper slot Redfish. We caught them on just about everything we had but I think the gulp shrimp produced the best. Rick caught one on a top water mirrolure. I caught one on a 17MR. We caught a number of them on live bait fish, both finger mullet and one I don't know the ID of. I caught two on live pin fish. Basically, anything that flashed got bit. It was a pretty aggressive bite.

It was a tremendous trip! It started slow and being Rick's first real flats adventure, he was having serious doubts until I finally found the fish.......Now he's all about Mosquito Lagoon!

Check out these photo from the trip.

Larry S.

Waving Rick over to a school of tailing Reds!

That's a tail in the upper left corner.

 

Fishing Report - Jacks, Mangrove Snapper, Trout 8-23-12

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Tide: Tail end of Out-going
Time Fished: 8:00 am - 10:00m
M.F.-4:30 AM
Partly Cloudy
Wind: SW at 2-4 mph

Other Observations:

Catch:
-(6) Jack Crevalle
-(1) Trout
-(1) small mangrove snapper, (finally crossed up a legal one).
-(1) Ribbon Fish!!!!

I put in at the launch north of Marineland again this morning. I was running a little late but probably got on the water by 8:00 AM. That was late and had I been there at daylight I could have easily had a 20 fish day!

I brought a plug rod with me this morning due to the top water action I saw the last time I was there. Boy did that turn out to be a winning idea.

As soon as I got within sight of my destination I could see fish chasing small bait on top and striking.
The top water action was some of the best I have seen in a while. They were not large fish but it made for some pretty good fishing.

Most of the fish were small schooling jacks but even a small jack can stretch your line! I saw several fish feeding in the mix that would jump completely out of the water and something told me they were ribbon fish though I had never seen them feed like this before.

I had the GoPro camera running and had just made a cast. I started to say I have never caught a ribbon fish before but before I could get the whole sentence out.....wham! Fish on! You guesses it, a Ribbon fish about 30" long had been fooled by my 27MR MirrorLure.



I found out a Ribbon fish can really jump!

There was almost a constant top water strike going on for the 2 hours that I was there and on a super low tide no less.

I did catch one keeper Mangrove Snapper on a fiddler crab but no sheepshead could I find.

about 10:00 I decided I needed to get going and said o.k., last cast. about 20' from the boat a nice little trout blew up on the MR though he was a little short of a keeper.

I had one nice fish break off and rob me of a $8 MirrOdine

My Dad had fish the intracoastal down in Ormond this morning and landed (3) nice trout on live croakers. One was a super nice Trout that weighed right at 5 lbs.

 That's one trophy Trout!

I have been promising him I would fish with him one morning so I guess that is my destination for in the morning.

Larry S.

Fishing Report 7/9/11 -PM - Pellicer Flats

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Mon. July 9, 2011
Moon - new moon on Fri.

M.F.= 1:30 pm
Temp.: Low 73, 87 h.
wind: N-NE-laid after 7pm

pressure: 29.99 (Steady)
humidity:82% -62-94%
rain: rain showers afternoon in bunnell but petered out before getting to the beach

fully cloudy and rain

The lack of action this morning at Scottsmoor left me disappointed and fell far short of satisfying my appetite to stretch my line. After fishing at Scottsmoor I went straight to the office to do some work. That was worse than not catching any fish and while working my mind wandered to thoughts of another fishing adventure. I knew the tide was about right to fish up at Pellicer flats but the ominous black Sky's suggested the trip could be a wet adventure. I checked the Doppler radar on line and found some pretty serious rain in a long line, all headed right for where I wanted to fish! However, it seemed to be breaking down just before getting there. It was later than I wanted when I finally made the commitment to leave. It was really bad looking and I was second guessing myself as it started to sprinkle on my windshield before I even got out of town.

When I arrived at the launch I was glad to see the weather had run everyone else off and I had the whole place to myself. The tide was almost full and it made catching any fiddler crabs a little tough but I did managed 12 or 15. I put the yak in the water, loaded up and paddled off.

My plan was to try to catch a few sheepshead off some pilings before heading to the flats for some top water action. I spent about a half hour soaking fiddler crabs along the piles without even a nibble.

The tide was still coming in and the weather seemed to be holding so I headed for the nearest cut to ride the tide in to the flats before it changed. I fished my way in without a strike until I was near the west end of the cut. I had just noticed the tide had started out when I rounded a sharp bend in the cut. Ahead, I could see an oyster bar extended mostly across the cut. I was fishing a yellow Johny Rattler and made a long cast to the far side of the bar and started my retrieve. Shortly after clearing the bar the plug was smashed by a big trout that looked to be 20-22".  In true trout character he wallowed and fanned the surface before diving for deeper water. It was a great fight but the trout finally tore off by partially straightening the forward hook. Damn the luck.

While I was embroiled in the fight I saw another fish strike off a point up ahead. By the time I lost my fish that one had struck two more times. I finished plugging the spot and moved ahead to catch the striker. Three casts to the spot produced nothing. I moved ahead a little and made another cast. It was met with a serious strike. I had him on for just a minute but was able to escape me also.

With less than 30 minutes to fish before dark I decided I had better get across the flat to my little hot spot.

I eased up to a small dot of an oyster bar with a channel between it and the bank. I had seen a nice strike there as I plugged my way over. I made a long cast with the "rattler" and ...wham! Another real aggressive strike but I only felt the fish for a split second, another nice trout lost!

I repositioned to the north side of the bar and plugged a little more. It was about time to leave and I said "self  I'm gona make one more cast back into that channel where I just left. A couple of sloshes from the Johny Rattler and a nice 18" trout blew up on it and the fight was on.....I just can't get enough of that!

I plugged the area a bit longer without much action until it was pretty dark and time to start the mile plus paddle back to the hill. I wanted to paddle out the next cut to the south but had a little trouble finding it in the fading light. I finally recognized a narrow passage to a larger cut that led to the one I was looking for. As I came to a tee with the main cut there was just enough light left for me to see a massive strike up ahead. The fish through water 3' into the air. I hastily  paddled ahead to make a cast. Before I could get there at least 4 more fish struck the surface! They were tearing in up! It was some of the best top water action I had seen in a long time.

I made a cast with the "rattler" and it was immediately met with a strike. A larger than average ladyfish took to the air with some 10-15' charging leaps. I fished the spot for about 30 minutes, well past hard dark. The action was unbelievable but all I could catch was large ladyfish. It was getting late so I paddled off into the dark and left them biting. Still can't believe I couldn't catch a trout out of all that. Typically, trout and ladyfish hang together and your liable to catch either or when the bite is on.

It was 10pm by the time I got back to the launch.

I ended up with (4) nice trout on, loosing (3) of them and about 8-10 large ladyfish. All in all it was a pretty good little trip.. Had the tide been an hour earlier I feel like I could have whooped up on the trout.

Til the next report, good luck,

Larry S.

The odd thing was this trout only had one spot on his body but normal spots on his fins and tail?

Unusual.

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Fishing Report 7/9/11 AM - Indian River Lagoon

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Mon. July 9, 2011
Moon - One day after First Quarter moon

M.F.= 6:35 am
Temp.: Low 75, 89 h.
wind: S-calm to less than 10 mph

pressure: 29.99 (Steady)
humidity:70% -52-83%
rain: 0

Sunny to partly cloudy

I got a tip from one of the guys on the Orlando Kayak Fishing Club so I decided to give it a try this morning. It was S L O W !! I picked up one short trout trolling with my replacement x-rap on the way across the lagoon but the grass was so bad it was almost impossible. In retrospect I should have stopped there and made a few casts as I was seeing a lot of fish on the finder (over 4' in depth). Something told me to keep going however, probably the dreams of all the 30" trout stached up awaiting me.

I don't know why but there are a pile of dead fish floating on the surface. Mostly mullet but also saw pin fish, a couple reds and trout and some puffer fish? I mean a lot of them.....probably a few hundred.

I fished The recommended depth of 3' plus and minus with both xrap and 17mr without a strike....not even a ladyfish?

I trolled back to the west side and picked up a keeper trout just as I was reaching the depth I wanted to start plugging again. Dropped anchor and caught one more short trout and had a few other fish on.

A bunch of pesky dolphins came by and one just would not leave. fished all the way back north of the launch with almost no action. About a 5 mile paddle all together. I did not get up on the flats. I think it was one of the poorest days I can remember but I guess you have to have one of them once in a while to appreciate the good days.

I did talk to another guy there that I had seen there 2 weekends before and he had not caught a trout, only ladyfish.

The water seemed to have cleared up quite a bit from last weekend.

Anyhow, this trip did not pan out but I'll whoop up on em' next time!

Good Luck,
Larry Stephens

IFA Kayak Fishing Tournament - Titusville 6-19-11

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Tournament Day!
Mosquito Lagoon - East side & Indian River Lagoon - Scottsmoor
Sun. June 19, 2011
Moon - 4 days past full
M.F.= 3:00 pm
Temp.: Low 71, 87 h.
wind: SSW varied from 0 to 10 mph, switched to E at 1:00pm
pressure: 30.03 (Steady)
humidity: 65% -52-88%
rain: severe storms over night
Sunny

My prefishing had not revealed any particular outstanding spot to get on some big reds so I decided my plan would be to get my trout out of the way early at Scottsmoor and then head for the NE corner of Mosquito Lagoon, put back in and just start paddling South looking for reds.

At the Capt's meeting we were instructed that we could launch no earlier than 5:45 am. I think I was in the water just before 6AM.

I paddled for the edge of the grass to fish the sand bottom at the 30-36" depth. On my third cast of the morning I hooked up with a trout on the 27MR-18 MirrOdine. Boy was I excited! I could tell by the way he pulled he would measure enough to get me on the board. Half way to the boat he pull off! Man, was that disappointing.

I recovered the plug and made another cast. A couple of fast twitches and I had fish #2 on. I jumped the ladyfish a few times and she threw the plug. The next cast was met with the same result…another lady fish. I pried her off the plug and hummed it right back out. The plug barely hit the water when it was smashed by a 3 lb. Ladyfish.

That's the one, I'm just about to make a big mistake!

I pulled the fish alongside the boat and lifted it up with the line. It’s mouth was gaped open with the forward hook in the lower jaw. This is where everything went sideways.

I could see what was about to happen but I couldn’t stop myself….I just had to lip that fish. As soon as I touched her she went wild, thrashing and hung the trailing hook in the side of my thumb! Now, I’m hooked on one end of the plug with a 3 lb flopping fish on the other. I instantly grabbed the fish and pinned it in the bottom of the boat.

My first thought was to get the fish off the plug before the hook got buried even worse. There was already blood all over the plug, thumb and my leg. I used my pointer and middle finger to maneuver the plug out of the fish while I held the thing with a death grip with my right hand and got her out of the boat. I rolled my thumb over and immediately realized the situation was already to the “worse” point! The hook was completely buried to the bottom of the bend. Damn it! This is pretty bad I thought. I might not be able to deal with this by myself. This might turn into a trip to the emergency room.

After accessing my options I decided to try to push the hook through and get myself back in the game.
I pulled my bait knife, cut the line to the plug and retrieved the needle nose pliers from my tackle box. The next step was to get the plug off the hook. I used my knife to open the split ring and was able to work the hook off. It was a delicate operation to say the least.

With the hook off the plug I clipped the other two hooks off the treble. All the easy steps were over and it was time to push this thing through! I don’t know how many times I pushed, probably 6-8 times. I would push….stop and take a couple deep breaths. It felt like I was pushing as hard as I could. Finally, the point started to come through. I cut the skin down the side of the point a little and once the barb was out it gave me enough room to get the needle nose around the hook and clip the point off. Man was that a relief when the barb popped off! After that it was just a matter of backing it out and bleeding it as much as possible to flush the wound out.

In a couple minutes I had a new hook on the plug and was back in the hunt! Strangely enough my thumb wasn’t even soar. I barely thought about it the rest of the day.

In short order I had another trout on and lost that one also. A few minutes later I lost another! I couldn’t believe this was happening. Finally, I put a trout in the boat but he turned out to he a ¼” short to measure. The bite started slowing after that so I paddled back north to start another drift.

I got back into a few fish and before I knew it I had five legal trout but all were about 16 ½”. I just couldn’t get any on that were any better than that. I had about 12 on all together. I don’t know how many ladyfish but they far out numbered the trout.

At 8:30, an hour late, I decided I would have to head for the ramp and get out of there. I loaded the boat as fast as possible and struck out for New Smyrna Beach.

I think I was back in the water around 10:00 and was feeling I had really burned a lot of valuable time and was questioning myself for not going to Dummits Cove where I had seen a pile of redfish on Friday and was much closer. The problem was I just could not get them to eat.

I started paddling south and had brought my binoculars so I could increase my coverage of the flat. It was a great idea that worked well. The only problem was that there was almost no redfish to be found. I paddled 3 ½ miles south and probably did not see half a dozen redfish and all were jumped, no pushers, no tailing, no nothing!

While it was only 87 deg. The wind had died on the flat and it was H O T! I had to pull my glasses off and wipe the sweat rolling down my face about every third cast.


Once I reached tiger shoals I realized the likely hood I was going to put a red in the boat was not good and getting worse. All I could dohope for a miracle. I did jump a few more fish on the way back but saw nothing I could try to make a cast to.

Finally, I made it back to a sandy strip I call the sink hole and came up on the down wind end and made a cast with the 27MR. Wham! Fish on but it immediately went air born……ladyfish. I made another cast and hooked up with a fish that pulled hard and held deep. I felt I might have a minimum red on but all of the sudden the line popped! Noooooooooo! After all the bad luck for the day I just lost a plug that I have literally caught hundreds of fish on. I guess it was inevitable though.

I tied my back up 17MR on and made another cast. I immediately hooked another lady. Another cast another lady.
I put the plug rod down and made a cast with my gold spoon. You guessed it…..another ladyfish! However, this one was a little small, maybe 10”. About half way to the boat a huge redfish in the 36” range struck at the thrashing ladyfish! I could not believe it. If it had not been for the swarm of ladyfish I could have had a real shot at catching that fish. I think I could have finished 3^rd or 4^th with that fish. As it were he probably saw the boat and I could never draw another strike from him….ladyfish, sure!

I fished one more sand hole which took me right to the wire. Weigh in was 1:00-3:00pm and it was after 1:30 and I still had over a mile paddle to get hack to the truck! I squared everything away and started stroking. I knew I did not have close to enough fish to make a good show but typically half the boats will not weigh in a fish. After all that effort I was at least going to weigh in what I had……or so I thought.

I hit the hill running, through everything in the truck and took off like a shot. I had to get back to New Smyrna and cross over on hwy 44 to get to the interstate and head south to Titusville for the weigh in. I thought about shooting down A-1-A but 95 sounded faster. Well, just as I got onto the interstate I could see it was a parking lot up ahead and all traffic was stopped!!! It turned out to be a small pickup upside down on the shoulder and looked pretty bad. Hopefully no one was seriously hurt. Talk about rotten luck for me though! Rather than finishing in the middle of the field at about 18^th, I got a big fat zero for not making the 3:00pm dead line.

What a day! I can’t remember ever fishing any harder.

The weigh-in was pretty enlightening . It worked out that first place went to a guy that fished 125 miles from where the tournament was held! What! I couldn’t hardly believe it! The rules had stated “no off limits” but It would have never occurred to me that someone would fish so far outside the area. Incidentally, this guy is a captain and a guide and fished his home waters. That just was not right! Legal according to the rules….yep!

I did send a letter to the IFA urging them to have a look at the way this rule is written but as of this day I have received no response.
I probably had 30-40 ladyfish and about 12 trout on. No redfish however. There were two really large trout caught , one 27.75” and one 26.25”. The winning red was 39”(from Jacksonville).

Anyway that was the big Titusville Tournament. I don’t know if I would do that again or not. Maybe with a few rule changes.

Larry S.



Fishing Report 6/18/11 - Mosquito Lagoon-Eddy's Creek

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Mosquito Lagoon -Eddy's Creek
Sat.  June 18, 2011
Moon - 3 days past full
M.F.=  2:05 pm
Temp.: Low 75,  89 h.
wind: SSW@ <5  mph all morning
pressure: 30.07 (Steady)

humidity: 68% -45-88%   

rain: 0

Sunny

I decided to fish Eddy's Creek for my last ditch effort to get on some fish for the IFA tournament. I have never fished it before and it was quite a haul to get there.

I decided to try a new tactic today and took some binoculars with me to do some long range recon.

I paddled into the lagoon and started north looking for redfish and fishing any sand I could find. I picked up a few lady fish here and there but that was about it. I never saw any sign of a redfish....did not even jump one paddling! I could hardly believe it. I paddled almost out to the whales tail and glassed the flats boats to see what they were doing but most guys were just standing on the deck at the ready position, waiting. There were boats everywhere!

I headed up north and after a while decided to try paddle back to the launch and try to hit another spot before it got to late.

I decide to plug the sandy bottom of the basin near the launch with my 27mr18. It was not long before I had a fish on and put another ladyfish in the boat. Another couple casts and I hung a trout that pulled off. I hooked up with another few ladyfish and finally put a nice 17" trout in the boat.

I paddled back to the launch, loaded up and headed for Scottsmoor. I did talk to 3 other boats at the launch that had the same experience as me....no redfish.

When I got to Scottsmoor there was a boat that had just come in and I asked what they had done. He related they had caught some trout but had not seen a redfish! He said they are all over on the east side!

I put in and headed out to the deeper waster just outside the edge of the grass. I worked up and down the edge but was only able to boat on 17" and a few more ladyfish.

It was getting hot so I decided to call off the hunt and head home.

Larry