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

August 1, 2012

August is here and that means fall is right around the corner. Before that though we will ride out the dog days of summer. The summer heat doesn’t really impact our fishing too much. If you can stand the daytime sunlight, there is often good fishing to be had during the mid-day hours and generally very little boat traffic to deal with. Lately we have been doing really well on redfish and speckled trout in the Mosquito Lagoon, including some big trophy trout over 5lbs. There are fair numbers of tarpon around Ponce Inlet and the ICW waterway around New Smyrna and Port Orange. One important note, if you want to take advantage of fishing with our special summer baitfish, this will probably be the last month we’ll be able to use them before they get too big and their numbers dwindle. Lately we’ve been average 3-5 redfish and 10-15 trout per day with them, and with the dirty water we are having, it's been the best and preferred choice for bites.

The Speckled Trout bite continues to be good to great on a daily basis. Water levels have dropped moving most of the big trophy gator trout over 5lbs off the flats and shorelines and onto the edges of deeper creeks, sloughs and channels where they are mixed in with the smaller ones. But in the Mosquito Lagoon we’ve been seeing a lot of big trout finning in the super shallow grass flats. The lure and fly bite has slowed down considerably with all the dirty water we are experiencing. been doing most of our trout catching with live bait like pigfish, croakers and finger mullet. Most days we are averaging 10-15 trout. We caught quite a few trout in the 4-7lb range lately, including one day where we scored six trout over 4lbs.

The Redfish bite has remained fair to good. The water has been super dirty over the past couple weeks but it is slowly cleaning up allowing us to sight fish again in some area. Water levels are really low which has pulled many fish out of the shallows and into the deeper creeks, channels, and big sand sloughs. On rising tides we’re finding a lot of 4-10lb redfish tailing in shallow grass or cruising oyster/shell beds. Bigger adult redfish in the 20-40lb class are moving in the ICW towards Ponce Inlet for their annual spawn. While we aren’t doing much sight fishing with lures or flies, we’re still catching redfish on live bait. Lately we’ve been averaging 3-7 redfish per day, and we’ve had a few days in the last two weeks where we’ve caught 10-15 redfish per day.

Tarpon are mostly concentrated around Ponce Inlet itself and in the ICW channel and creeks directly beside the Inlet. A recent cold water upwelling in the ocean has driven some of those fish inshore too, and moved the rest completely out of the area. Most of the tarpon around the Inlet are in the 50-80lb range. We’ll throw swimbaits, plugs, jigs and live bait to these since they are in 10-20’ of water. Tarpon will only be around another 6 weeks or so before many of them migrate out of the area before cooler weather settles in.

About half of August is already booked, so there are plenty of good open dates remaining. Same goes for September. As always short notice trips are available if I have the date open. I also run afternoon charters as well fishing with live pigfish and croakers. Call or email to secure a reservation. Read my fishing charter page to view the top reasons why you should book your trip with me today. Read my fishing report archive to review write-ups from the past several years. I look forward to fishing with you soon…386-212-4931.

Some client catches from the past month...







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