Fox Lake Kayak Fishing

Happy Monday Spacefish!

I hope everyone is doing well, and survived and stayed on the ground with all of this wind blowing around all over the place! I recently went up to Titusville and fished at Fox Lake – this is a place I have now gone to on several occasions, and it’s a good place to fish. I have never gone there and ended up without a decent number of fish for the outing – but never caught them for good size. This past trip was no exception, i wasn’t able to fish as long as usual, but I was able to catch a decent number of fish for the time spent, and was able to catch a 2 that I guesstimate to be between 2 and 3 pounds, so it was not a bad outing for me.

Where to Launch

When fishing Fox Lake, the place to launch is Fox Lake Park located at 4400 Fox Lake Rd, Titusville, FL 32796. On the Southwest corner of the lake there is a boat ramp, as well as a designated kayak launch, with public restrooms and a picnic pavilion nearby.

Right now, the kayak launch is doable but has seen better days, but for potential anglers looking to launch a boat, the ramp is in rough shape! I was able to use the kayak launch but just be on the lookout for critters because theres been a lot of overgrowth in that area.

Fishing Report

It was a pretty decent day of fishing, despite the overcast conditions I was not able to have any success fishing topwater. I also did not catch any fish on moving presentations such as swimbaits or speedworms. There were two areas and two baits that produced for me, and it was a slow and boring way to go, but it was a nice cool day, and fish were biting so I cannot complain!

The first way was finding offshore patches of lily pads and fishing them with a stick worm, the one I used that brought success was the Fish, or Die Ramrod in Philadelphia (Junebug Red). This is Bass fishing 101, I rigged the stick worm on a 3/0 EWG Worm Hook, and texposed the hook to remove any chances of snags on the lil pad roots underneath. I would flip and pitch this worm into holes around the pads, or onto the pads themselves and them let the bait slide off. The key to the old school stick worm is to do as little as possible, I’d let the bait take that slow, shimmy of a fall, with the line as tight as I could keep it and feel for the bites on the fall. I was able to pick up 7 or 8 smaller Bass this way throughout the trip.

The other method of success I was able to have was fishing a Trick Worm, weightless and weedless. The one I used was the Fish, or Die Musket in Philadelphia (Junebug Red). I fished this bait in the shallows along the east bank of the lake, where this bait was particularly effective, skipping it under overhanging cover and catching Bass that were tucked back in there. This bait skips really well! I actually separated the tail on this bait to give it a fluke-stick type of action and would cast or skip it to a good looking spot, let it sit there idle for a number of seconds then give it a good jerk-jerk-pause cadence. I was able to catch 6 total fish with my best quality coming from this approach.

Tannic Water – What does that Mean?

So if you’re a novice, or just not a week in and week out angler there are probably moments where you come across a term, a “buzzword” if you will, and it’s a word you hear a lot but you don’t really know what it means…one of those words for me when I moved to Florida was “tannic”. As in tannic acid, or tannin stained water, but what does it mean? Well, long story short it means the water is stained from tannins that come from vegetation. It’s not a bad thing, and it does not mean that the water is dirty. It just means that it’s going to be a darker, black color. To me, it looks like sweet tea. What this means as an angler is that the visibility of the fish is not going to be as strong and the things that live in that water are going to be darker. Like the Bass I caught at Fox Lake. But one key to success in tannic water is to go with darker color baits – colors like Junebug and Candybug are my favorites, but anything black/blue/purple is what you need to be throwing for Bass in these environments.

Conclusion

Fox Lake is still a lake that produces good catches for Largemouth Bass, on the north end of the Space Coast it provides a great fishery for those looking at longer commutes to Stick Marsh & Headwaters, and it is a fishery that if closer to where I live, would go and fish more often.

I hope everyone has a great week ahead, may your lines be ever tight, and fishing success find you on the water. Until next time!