Had a wonderful day yesterday fishing with Dennis and his daughter Alyssa from Lake Mary, Florida.  As we pushed away from the dock at 0530 the air temperature was already 80 degrees and the sky was just growing light, welcome to Florida in the summer. At our first stop I found the water levels are dropping, and I was unsuccessful poling my skiff into a location I found fish just two days before.  The Mosquito Lagoon is pretty much non-tidal but when faced with a southerly wind in the summer the water levels can drop quickly.  These southerly winds can also have a effect on our offshore waters as they have a tendency to push the warm surface water out into the Gulf Stream causing the cold upwellings to push up to fill the void. The degree of the cold water upwelling can very based on how long the south wind holds up.

After spending our first hour working my way off of the skinny flat, we found a very good sea trout bite out in about two feet of water in the area of a large concentration of mullet.  Over the next several hours Dennis and Alyssa caught a good number o sea trout, jacks and ladyfish on a 4-inch DOA  Shad Tail.  Soon the wind picked up and it was time to move to deeper water where I’ve been having some success finding larger redfish and black drum using my Hummingbird side imaging sonar, and we ended the morning with Dennis landing a very healthy 40-pound breeder redfish.

All in all it was a typical hot summer day on the Lagoon with some great anglers.

Good luck and good fishing,

Captain Tom Van Horn