Mosquito Lagoon Fishing Report Last week, I fished only one day, due to poor weather. Thursday, my wife joined me on the Mosquito Lagoon. Despite high winds much of the day, we spotted a decent number of redfish once the clouds passed through. Nine redfish and one drum was our final tally. Morning Glory and Watermelon Seed DOA CALs were the colors of the day.

This week, I was joined on Tuesday by Joe and his two sons. We saw a lot of redfish but most of the fish never saw the lures. After striking out with the reds, we tried trout fishing for a while but only landed four. The last hour was spent casting to some more redfish but the guys were blanked again.

Wednesday, honeymooners Rusty and Becky joined me for a day of some poor weather but great fishing. We began the morning trying to catch some early season tarpon. We saw a few but did not get a bite. The rest of the morning, we endured some extremely high winds but managed to land nine drum and two redfish. Becky shows off her first drum while Rusty is busy fighting one of his own.

Thursday, Wayne, a central Florida resident, treated British angler Shawn to his first trip to Mosquito Lagoon. Shawn landed the first two redfish of the day and then hooked up with a nice trout on a 4 inch DOA CAL in Arkansas Glow.

The guys hooked up with three more trout even larger but each one managed to throw the hook before we landed them. We saw hundreds of redfish throughout the day but they refused to eat unless the presentation was perfect. Wayne finally fooled this redfish that was following a large stingray.

Friday, I went searching for tarpon and snook. I found plenty of both. The tarpon were a bit smaller than I had hoped for but most of the snook I saw were much larger than I expected. The tarpon, which are notoriously finicky, were feeding well. Using a 3 inch DOA holographic shrimp, I jumped five and landed three. I had bites from more than a dozen others that did not get hooked. On the other hand, many of the snook showed little interest in eating. I caught two, missed a few other bites, and had one in the 15-20 pound range weave my line through a maze of tree branches before breaking off. All of the bites came on the holographic shrimp.

Contact Info - http://www.flyfishingfl.com/fly-fishing-guides.html

Compliments of Mosquito Creek Outdoors in Apopka Florida

First, let me apologize for the tardiness of this report.  This past weekend I was off of the water attending the Coastal Angler Magazine Fishing and Boating Expo in Melbourne, Florida.   Although the weather was nice, we still had great turnout, great speakers, and a great show.  Yes, nice weather on the same weekend of a fishing show typically draws attendees away, but in this case, our attendance was good. We also conducted another Hook Kids on Fishing event on Saturday, which was a ton of fun and a tremendous success.

My adventures last week started out with the pleasure of sharing a three-day charter with father and son team Rico Panilo and Rico Jr. from New Jersey.  Our plan was to mix it up a bit by targeting a different style of fishing each day. 

On our first day we launched out of Kennedy Point in Titusville for some sight fishing for redfish and sea trout, and the catching was tough.  We had some shots at tailing redfish early out, but after a hard day of fishing we ended up with a good number of ladyfish and small sea trout.  The schools of ladyfish have moved into the north IRL and they are working schools of glass minnows under terns and seagulls.

On our next day we opted to fish near-shore out of Port Canaveral in search of tripletail and cobia, and again we had a tough day managing only one tripletail, a spadefish, one flounder, and a sheepshead. 

On day three we ventured into the freshwater arena targeting schooling bass on the St Johns River near Lake Harney and again the fish weren’t jumping into the boat, but Rico Jr. did manage some decent size largemouth bass and a 5 pound southern flounder of all things caught on a live menhaden.  Oh by the way, we ended up taking the flounder to lunch at the Jolly Gator Fish Camp, where the nice folks whipped up some tasty blackened flounder sandwiches, yum. 

On Monday I guided a group of three into the Banana River No-Motor Zone where we caught a good number of sea trout and ladyfish on top water plugs.  The bite was fast and furious at first light with our best results coming from Storm Chug Bugs and Rapala Skitterwalks fished in 2 to 3 feet of water. As the day grew longer and the wind picked up, we decided to chunk out a few ladyfish, and managed a 36-inch and a 47-inch redfish.  The larger redfish was 47-inches long with a girth of 28-inches, and using the standard fish weight calculator measured out to be 46.06 pounds

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
Contact Info - http://www.flyfishingfl.com/fly-fishing-guides.html