The Mosquito Lagoon Fishing Report from Spotted Tail 5/14/11
Upcoming Events-
-Space shuttle Endeavour’s launch, Monday, May 16, 8:56 a.m.
-On May 21, Fly Fishing for West Coast Tarpon seminar at Mosquito Creek Outdoors, starting at 10 AM. Tom Van Horn will also be giving a tarpon seminar aimed at east coast fish.
Bumper Sticker of the Week Dept:
On Monday I finally got onto the Atlantic, accompanied by Scott Radloff. Our goal was to find some bait, then search for tarpon first and giant crevalle second.
We found bait, both mullet and menhaden, near and past Cape Canaveral. While we were fishing around the mullet we noticed a very dark spot moving north off the beach. It turned out to be a school of crevalle, not giants but rather fish of about five pounds. There were thousands of them.
We chased them up the beach for several miles. We didn’t count but we caught a lot on DOA CAL jigs.
When we finally gave up on them we fished around the menhaden schools they had led us to. The bluefish were thick, but there was not much else. We saw one shark and three or four barracuda, nothing more. All we caught were blues.
It turned out to be a 50 or 60 fish day, but nothing spectacular in the way of size. Still, it was beautiful out and even the smaller fish were quite entertaining.
On Tuesday I was back in Mosquito Lagoon, joined by fly fishing Canadians Mark and Cody Zimmer. We found loads of big redfish tailing. They would not take any of the flies we tried. We had a bright moment when Mark cast a crab fly into a small school of big tailers and his line came tight. The fish he caught was a red of maybe 16 inches. In the middle of all those big ones, too!
Cody wanted a fish bad so the last 30 minutes we chunked with mullet. He got a four pound and a six pound trout, then a red of about 15 pounds. I forgot my camera, so there are no photos of these fish. 🙁
Again, it was a beautiful day and tons of big fish were spotted, but it was frustrating not being able to convince them to eat anything.
Wednesday Steve Kas and Jim Trub came up from Boca Raton, bringing Steve’s Archer Craft. I joined them and we went looking for all the fish I’d seen the previous day. They flat out disappeared. We looked from Pelican Island to Georges Bar and saw one redfish all day.
On the bright side the trout bite was pretty strong. We got a couple dozen to about 20 inches by casting jigs around the outside of several different bars.
Jim Trub with one of the many trout we got.
Steve Kas with another Mosquito Lagoon trout
Still, they wanted redfish. It was maddening not being able to find any after seeing so many the previous day. Ya shoulda been here yesterday!
Spotted Tail was on the Mosquito Lagoon again on Thursday, joined by Karl Dienst and his friend Brad. Tossing DOA Shrimp and CAL jigs we got a lot of trout, ranging from eight inches to almost 20. There were a lot of ladyfish around, too. We concentrated on trout fishing most of the day. With about an hour to go we went looking for reds. We found a few slot fish and Brad got two on ladyfish chunks.
Brad got a bunch of these seatrout on the DOA Shrimp.
Every fishing guide loves scenes like this- ready to boat a Mosquito Lagoon redfish.
A cheesy grin for the best fish of the day.
On Friday Jim Shwartzentruber and his friend George, fly casters from Utah, joined me hoping to bag a big red or two. It was not to be. We searched all day, me poling and them blind casting with a black bunny fly, and saw maybe a dozen reds. Once the wind started cranking the fishing got very tough too. They did get three of four decent seatrout, but again, those were not the target.
I hope the reds start cranking again like they did on Tuesday. I have every day this coming week booked up.
Embrace simplicity.
Life is great and I love my work!
Life is short- go fishing!
John Kumiski
All content in this blog, including writing and photos, copyright John Kumiski 2011. All rights are reserved.
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