Happy Monday Spacefish Family,
Saturday morning I got up early and spent the day fishing one of my absolute favorite places to launch out of and fish. Honest John’s Fish Camp located on Mullet Creek on the Indian River Lagoon, a few miles north of Sebastian Inlet, and just southwest of Indian River Preserve State Park (great place to hike or bike as well!) This is an absolutely gorgeous place to spend time outdoors and on the water, but what makes this place a truly unique experience is that amongst the condos and high priced shoreline development that has taken place along the barrier island of the Space Coast, Honest John’s Fish Camp is a living relic of Old Florida. You will take a sand gravel road from A1A back to the Smith Family Homestead that has been standing since 1887, and launch out of an Old Florida Fish Camp. More info will be at the bottom of this report.
How to Launch
Kayak and Canoe rentals are offered here, if you have your own paddle craft there is a 5 dollar launch fee. You can launch right off the shoreline beside the boat docks. They do have a restroom, they also sell ice, live shrimp, beer/soda/water and snacks. And if you’re a numbskull like me and would forget your head if it wasn’t attached to your body, wakeup at 5:30 am to get down there before the sun comes up and leave your paddle at home, they will loan you one for the day. Thank you again!
Where to Fish
Tough thing to write about here – in a sense, everywhere! It is one of those overwhelming places to fish the first time, but what makes it one of the best kayak and canoe fishing spots on the Space Coast is as far as inshore fishing goes, this place has it all within several miles. There are the Mullet Creek Mangrove Islands, there is a deeper boat channel that runs through the middle, there are residential canals, there are shallow shorelines on the east and west sides of the collection of islands. My recommendation is to check out depth contours before you go, here is a free online resource I use before I go on any kayak fishing trip (https://usa.fishermap.org/), make a game plan on areas you want to hit. Be on the look out for Birds and Bait, this will tell you where the predators are. Understand the wind, in the hotter months you want to fish wind blown waters, especially wind blown points, your better Snook will be holding there, facing into the current, or sitting just off it to ambush small bait fish or whatever else is being pushed with the moving water. Depending on which direction the wind is moving the water, will depend on the side of the island I fish.
The wind was blowing S/SE this past Saturday. So what I did was in the calm morning hours I fished around the first spoil island you will see, and caught several trout here. I then went south along the boat channel, where I caught several Jacks and Ladyfish, there were thick in the north of the channel, so I paddles south until I hit the first intersection, the wind had picked up a little now, so I worked the points, casting upwind current and retrieving with the wind, I caught two more trout this way. I entered a little cut in the shoreline on the west shoreline of the boat channel, too small for boats, it is completely covered by mangroves, so I had to take my rods down from their holsters. I used my micro setup since it was so tight in here, I caught two small Snook in this cut, when I entered out on the other side the wind was pushing water into the cut, creating a bottleneck, because of this I had a hard time holding position in the kayak, but I was able to land a really nice flounder at this spot.
The area of the Indian River Lagoon around Honest John's Fish Camp has always been a reliable place to catch healthy Trout in good numbers, that was no exception this past weekend. This Trout pictured was caught near the first spoil island south of Honest John's Fish Camp, and this flounder was caught in an area where a small cut in the mangroves opened to a wider flat, wind blown water was causing bait to bottle neck at this chokepoint and predators like Flounder were stacked up and feeding.
I paddled south and then cut west across the larger intersection of the Mullet Creek Islands, I entered the boat channel again and let the wind push me back north, I caught 3 more Snook along the east shoreline of the boat channel. I went east through the other interaction to get back to the western side of the islands, and work some of the outer docks of the residential canals. I caught my largest Snook of the day, who was sitting off in a pocket of the mangroves, in an area of wind protection, it was a perfect spot for large snook, it was shaded, covered and within a few feet of the point, where I can only imagine this fish was lurking waiting to ambush mullet as they meandered past.
My best Snook from this past Saturday fishing the Mangrove Islands of Mullet Creek, located on the Indian River Lagoon just south of Honest John's Fish Camp.
After I caught this Snook, I worked over to the docks, and fished the docks and seawalls for a bit, I caught two more Snook along the seawalls. One of the last spots I fished was a small canal, the northernmost canal on the row of the residential canals. I hooked into a large Snook that ambushed my presentation as I retrieved along the seawall as soon as I cleared into the opening, but I was broken off on the rocks that lay along the bottom of the wall. Earlier this summer, I was able to work back into this small canal and catch tarpon, but I didn’t see any rolling in there this past weekend. This canal has more trees and natural shoreline than human development and is usually filled with small Snook and rolling Tarpon in the summer, but when I didn’t see any Tarpon rolling I decided to call it a day and paddle back to the launch spot.
What Worked for Me
I just talked about how to hone in on the right areas. This is more important than bait or lure selection in my opinion. 90% of the fish are in 10% of the water. And if you present to these fish, and they want to eat, they will eat. I caught fish on the 2 inch swimbait when I noticed minnows in the area, outside of that I fished a 3 inch Storm Shad in a light silver mullet pattern. This was my number 1 fish catcher, it really matched the size profile and color of the mullet I was seeing. I fished this on my new 7 foot medium casting rod/bait caster set up.
One thing I really like about using baitcasters in-shore is it allows for very accurate casting, which is very important if you want to catch Snook. If I am throwing a lure with an exposed hook I like using the baitcaster if possible. I don’t like skipping with it, because it that’s a one way ticket to backlash city, I have another set up that is my go-to for skipping weedless soft plastics, but I throw my lure at the structure and use thumb control to stop it right before it hits the mangroves and drops it right there. With the recent rains the water levels are up, skipping mangroves isn’t nearly as effective as they were a month ago when the water levels were down, so using the casting set up and dropping bait right at the mangrove line proved effective this weekend.
Another thing I really like about the baitcaster is it is lighter and faster and when you make hundreds upon thousands of casts on a fishing trip it makes a difference. Also it offers more horsepower than a spinning reel. I am able to turn a Snook’s head faster and get them out of their cover more quickly, which means I can afford to go down in leader size for more bites. I used a 14 pound Berkley Vanish Fluorocarbon leader and only got broken off once, and in that situation, I could have been using a 30 pound leader and gotten broken off.
This casting combo I use started when I saw a sale bin of fishing rods at Wal-Mart. The Lew’s Xfinity Inshore Casting Rod was marked down to 25 by bucks, so I bought it, paired it with a 19.99 (don’t let anyone tell you fishing has to be a budget breaking hobby) Quantum baitcaster that was on sale at Dick’s and rigged it with 10 pound Spiderwire braid. I also used a Gulp! Shrimp in New Penny with a Chartreuse Tail, and caught a trout, a Snook and Lady using it. There is no doubt that Gulp! Shrimp is a fish catching machine, but I really don’t like sitting there and slow fishing it, so I didn’t use it as much as the swimbaits. I didn’t throw any top water yesterday, I had one rigged but there was so much debris on the surface of the water from the recent stormy weather I decided to start off with the swimbait, and right off the bat I caught some fish and fished this bait for 80% of the time I was out there and the action never slowed.
History and Information – Honest John’s Fish Camp
“Honest John’s Fish Camp began as a government homestead in 1887. Robert T. Smith and his brother Charley came from southwest Georgia seeking a new life after the ravages of the Civil War. They were farmers and raised beans, sweet potatoes (yams), collards and later citrus. Their produce was shipped to the White House during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Robert (Uncle Bob) bought out his brother’s interest in the homestead, married a Missouri gal named Elizabeth (Bessie) Wells, built a cracker house in 1899 and started raising a family. Honest John was the third child of eight. He disliked farming and became a commercial fisherman. He holds the Honest John’s Fish Camp trout record of 13 lbs. 4 oz. Honest John died in 1994, but his legacy lives on. His daughter, Barbara Smith Arthur holds seven IGFA world records for sea trout and one for black drum. Barbara and her husband Roger have three sons who operate the fish camp today.” https://www.honestjohnsfishcamp.com/
The address is 740 Old Florida Trail, Melbourne Beach, FL 32951 and their phone number is 321-727-2923. No matter what your reason is for going, this is a family’s private property, the gate to their property is closed, make sure you call before entering the gate, they also have signs on the gate, but while I was launching I overheard the owner asking a couple why they came in, letting themselves in without calling first.
Click on the website for more information if you are interested in visiting. They offer kayak, canoe and boat rentals as well. So this is a great place to go if you are interested in renting a craft to fish for the day. Another great link for the history of Honest John’s if you are interested in learning more. https://www.florida-backroads-travel.com/honest-johns-fish-camp.html
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.