My Hickory Shad on Fly on Florida’s Econ Creek, photo by Paul MacInnis

My Central Florida angling adventures have been numerous since my last report covering both freshwater and saltwater fishing on the St Johns River near Geneva Florida, pompano and sheepshead fishing out of Port Canaveral and fishing on Mosquito Lagoon for redfish and sea trout with great catches in all arenas.

Although the weather has been challenging in some cases this past week with passing cold fronts, blustery winds and some sever storm, we still managed some great fishing days with average air temperatures in the 60’s. It is tough living in Central Florida and fishing year around, not!!!

For starters, the image above is of a very special one of a kind gift from my good friend Susan Rieckmann who illustrated the image of a redfish and if you look closely you can see a chart of the north Indian River and Mosquito Lagoons. Very cool, thanks you Susan.

As you can see, I’ve been preparing this past week for the arrival of the American shad run on the St Johns River by building several new ultralight spinning rods and tying up a new batch of shad flies. Thus far the shad run is still limited but improving in the Econ stretch of the St Johns with only four caught by my clients this week.  It seems the better reports are still coming from the Mullet Lake section with double digit numbers being reported.  The crappie bite on the other hand has been good averaging 20 plus fish days on two different trips.  The water levels on the St Johns River are very low with little or no current, and the crappie have been holding up in the deeper bends.  Most of the fish caught this past week were on tandem shad dart and crappie jig combination rigs and pink TTI Blakemore Road Runners.

On the Mosquito Lagoon and north Indian River Lagoons, the water levels are very low, and the water clarity has improved to the point where sight fishing is an option.  It is very clear to the north and decent from Haulover Cannel south.

On the Port Canaveral trips, the pompano, drum and sheepshead fishing has been good around structure fishing with sand fleas.

All in all, the catching has been great and the fishing even better.

As always, if you have questions, need information or would like to book a charter, please contact me.

Good luck and good fishing,

Captain Tom Van Horn