New Smyrna Beach Area - Indian River Lagoon - Mosquito Lagoon Fishing Report

December 20,2024

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to everyone! 2024 was another fantastic year for me and our local fishery. The Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River Lagoon continue their historic comeback with healthy water and beautiful grass flats (we even have had some flamingos take up residence in the lagoon!). We continue to see increased numbers of every fish we target. Redfish dominated the scene from Daytona Beach to Titusville, but we also caught plenty of speckled trout, black drum and snook in those inshore backwaters. While those will always continue to be our primary fish we catch, we also caught triple tail, cubera snapper, flounder, sharks, huge bluefish, and jack crevalle! We had Hurricane Milton smack us pretty good this fall, but it didn’t slow down business. I posted yet another record year of charter bookings and ended up turning many away because I had no availability…for a one man show I can’t take on much more! I welcomed clients and guests from 31 different states and caught even more fish than we did last year. Having said all that…I can’t wait to see what 2025 has in store for me!

Have you checked out my fishing report videos on Youtube? Head over to my Youtube Channel and give them a view. I break down what’s biting for us at the moment and include some photos of clients from the past month. If you want to stay in the loop subscribe to the channel and give them a thumbs up.

Days on the calendar are starting to fill up over the next several months. Winter and spring are extremely busy here in Central Florida with people visiting for the winter, spring break vacations, and holiday travels. There are no slow months here so don’t wait till the last minute to schedule.

Mosquito Lagoon and the shallow flats has been red hot for redfish the last couple months. If you missed out on November, well we were averaging 20-30 redfish per day! We still have plenty of days like that in January, February and March though as that’s usually the best shallow water redfish action of the year. Water levels are dropping and schools are starting to form up right now with the super clear water which makes for fun sight casting. Last winter we found multiple schools of redfish with 200+ fish roaming the flats and with even more fish around this year it should be an epic winter and spring.

It’s been a really good speckled trout bite in the Mosquito Lagoon shallow water recently. A few trips I did in the past week caught 20+ trout casting lures with most of the fish in the 15-20” range. Big gator trout are starting to move up ultra shallow to warm up in the colder water. Should get even better when winter colder water really takes it’s grip. We routinely see the biggest speckled trout of the year during the next few months. We usually catch a few giants approaching 10 pounds, but its’ the exception not the norm.

Haven’t had a whole lot of cold weather yet this winter, but we are starting to see some big schools of snook forming in the deeper holes in Mosquito Lagoon and New Smyrna Beach backwaters. The last several trips I did all caught 10+ snook. More cold fronts on the horizon should really bunch them up into schools of hundreds of snook. It’s quite common in the winter for me to have charters where we land 20+ snook per day. Many are smaller snook under 24 inches. We’ll see plenty of big ones over 30 inches but they get pretty lethargic and tough to get bite.

Black drum are schooling up on the shallow flats big time in Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River Lagoon recently. I’ve found a few groups holding over 200 fish in the past couple weeks which have been a blast for my clients to sight cast. They’ll be like this from now through the spring. Should also be seeing some giant black drum from 25-50+ pounds showing up on the deeper flats in the Lagoons soon. The last few years there have been a couple enormous schools of 500+ of those mega drum which are some of the biggest anywhere in the world.

January dates are filling up but I have 11 dates still available. February and March are also booking quick as we get into the local spring events like Daytona 500, nationwide spring breaks, and business conventions. Don’t wait till the last minute! Text me or call me at 386-212-4931 or even send me an email to secure a date. Read my fishing charter page to view the top reasons why you should book your trip with me today. I look forward to fishing with you soon…