Fishing conditions have shown some improvement on the Mosquito Lagoon, as water levels have dropped and water clarity has improved. These changes have led to the return of tailing redfish and black drum on the flats, and better sight fishing altogether. The winds this past week also settled down making fishing offshore out of Port Canaveral an option with favorable seas. All of this glory will be short lived though as stormy conditions and gusty winds are predicted through Monday.
On my adventures this past week, we experienced both heroes and zeros with a mixed bag of both very successful and not so successful charters.
On the Lagoons, we had great results at finding large black drum in and around the bridges fishing with both live shrimp and blue crab. The only challenge with these brutes is once hooked, trying to maneuver or should I say manhandle them out from under the bridges. These are 40 to 50 pound fish, and our catch to hook-up ratio is about 1 fish caught to 5 break-offs. In addition, once the fish is hooked, the angler’s job is to keep the fish out of the piles while I maneuver the boat and fish out from under the bridge. Once we get them clear of the bridge, we have a much greater success rate. We were also successful locating black drum in open water channels and on the flats as well. Out on the flats yesterday tailing redfish were a common site, but the challenge was getting into casting range without spooking the fish. Although there were many sighted, we only managed to hook-up and catch one slot and one over slot fish.
Earlier in the week the conditions were favorable for venturing out of Port Canaveral in search of cobia. The seas that day were predicted at 2 to 3 feet with a westerly wind direction at 5 to 10 knots, which as usual was not the case. Instead of turning back after we exited the Port we decided to tough it out, and we spent the day cobia looking instead of catching. The water temperature was around 71 degrees which is a bit higher than the range cobia like, so my hopes are we haven’t missed the Canaveral cobia run this year.
All in all, it was a great week on the water with great clients, and I’m looking forward to next week’s adventures. If you are interested in booking a charter this month, I only have three open days remaining, so give me a call if you would like to go fishing.
As always, if you have any questions or need more information, please contact me.
Good luck and good fishing,
Captain Tom Van Horn
407-416-1187
- January 2021:Tom Van Horn - December 31, 2020
- December, Tom Van Horn - December 1, 2020
- Tom Van Horn:November - October 30, 2020
