The heat is on here in Central Florida as we settle into our typical summer weather patterns. Throughout the past week we’ve experienced hot muggy days with afternoon thunderstorms, but that doesn’t mean that fishing isn’t good.
I started the week off with a low sodium charter (freshwater) on the St Johns River near Geneva Florida. After meeting my clients, Olin, Kenny and Logan at the CS Lee Park, we headed to Lake Harney is search of largemouth bass. As you can expect the water levels on the river are elevated from recent afternoon rains, but they still remain within the banks. After arriving at the lake we quickly learned the schooling largemouth and sunshine bass are still active and they were willing to take a DOA 4″ Shad Tails fished quickly on top in the areas of busting fish. Later we mover to some deeper holes in the bends of the river and caught some respectable channel catfish and finished the charter with an ecotour of the Econ Creek.
My next adventure took me to the Mosquito Lagoon where I was joined by Jeff and Brian Cook for a day of redfish fishing. I knew we we were in trouble when Jeff’s first cast resulted in a 40″ redfish. Typically a fish on the first cast is the kiss of death as was the case on this trip, but at least it was a very respectable fish. On the Lagoon this week the water levels are very high and the water was dirty in all of the areas we fished. Additionally the strong west wind made fishing a challenge and we didn’t get another bite all morning.
Yesterday I fished a near-shore tarpon charter out of Port Canaveral with Ed and Dan Connelly and again strong westerly winds made fishing very tough. We left the Port and headed south where we found large schools of Atlantic menhaden (pogies) from the steeples south to Patrick AFB. After netting a well full of live bait we slow trolled our way back to the Port, and we could not buy a bite. Eventually we located some large schools of little tunny busting pods of glass minnows and we managed to hook a few, but we never managed any to the boat. Around noon a line of thunderstorms blew in from the west and we called it a day without catching a fish. The conditions are right for the tarpon, but they didn’t want to play.
All in all it was a great week of fishing.
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Good luck and good fishing,
Captain Tom Van Horn
- January 2021:Tom Van Horn - December 31, 2020
- December, Tom Van Horn - December 1, 2020
- Tom Van Horn:November - October 30, 2020
