Kayak Fishing: Navigating Wacky Winter Weather in Central Florida

Happy Monday Spacefish!

I hope everyone had a great week and weekend. How about the weather on Saturday, sheesh! I am starting to make a habit out of being the only person out on the water on these days, hey at least I don’t have to worry about being waked by a boater. This week instead of talking about a “spot” to kayak fish, I am going to talk about how to navigate through, and catch fish during the wacky wintertime weather patterns that we have been getting. Let’s dive in.

The Snotty Weather Days

I launched from Kelly Park East, located at 2504-2526 N Banana River Dr, Merritt Island, FL 32952. There are two different Kelly Park’s, the “east” variety is the one you want, the other one has a boat ramp, but Kelly Park East is the place you want to launch non-motorized craft from.

Once the sun finally poked its head out to warm things up a bit, the bite was at its peak, and I was able to land one nice Snook on the trip, on a 3 inch Z-Man Hercules Swim Bait in Mulletron. So I know that I said I wasn’t going to discuss spots, but I will talk about where I launched and where I fished as a strategy for dealing with the rough weather. I launched from Fisherman’s Landing in Grant, and pushed across to the collection of islands around Mullet Creek, just south of Honest John’s Fish Camp. This area is one of my favorite places to fish along the Space Coast, and I have done a report about this area before – check it out if you want to read more about this area! It’s a place you can catch good numbers of Trout and Snook, pretty much year round.

So, I launch out of Fisherman’s Landing, head across to the islands and get into wind protected shorelines – the crossing was pretty sketchy, not going to lie, halfway there I contemplated whether this was a wise choice or not. Even with the pedal drive kayak, it was tough sledding in the chop, and several times I had to turn directly into the wind during strong gusts to take the rolling waves head on instead of from the side. Note to newbie kayak anglers, if you’re ever in a situation like this, better to nose into rolling water than take it from the side.

I chose this set of islands because they have tall shorelines, it’s a lot of mangroves but there are also taller trees and they do a good job of blocking the wind. But because they are islands some water is still getting pushed and wrapped around points and corners bringing moving water along the shorelines. My best areas of success were the corners of the islands which stretch east to west, the dead center of the islands where the water was pretty stagnant and didn’t produce for me. The moral of the story when it comes to days like we had Saturday, are to find wind protection, but enough moving water to keep things fresh and livened up.

As far as bait goes, the Vudu Shrimp caught the most fish, but the Z-Man Hercules caught fish, and landed the biggest of the day. I have said this before, and I will say this again – what you throw is not as important as where you throw it. It’s all about making sure you bait is in front of a fish, and most importantly a fish that wants to eat.

Post-Front (High Pressure Days)

My inshore fishing plan is to….go Bass fishing. Yeah, I’ll be honest with you. I went inshore fishing on a post front high barometric pressure day over the Christmas holidays and I skunked…SKUNKED – yuck! I got home and wrote some notes down about the trip. I noticed that literally all of my skunks have come when trying to inshore fish on high barometric pressure days – that being said I have caught fish on high pressure days inshore, but not at high catch rates like days that are low pressure.

Not to get side tracked, but jotting notes about my trips has been something that I have found helpful over the past few years, it helps me to identify patterns, and my wife seems oddly perplexed by my “diary” (it’s a fishing journal damnit!) but I am sticking with it nonetheless.

So all that being said, I have found the action/numbers game of Bass fishing to be better than inshore fishing (for the most part). At least during the winter time where Bass are starting to move up closer to the shallows and are feeding pretty heavily in preparation for the spawn. So I have gone on two post-front, since my inshore skunking on December 31st – both trips have been great in terms of quantity – quality is ehhhh. But I am not complaining, I went out to get the skunk off of me, and caught 20+ Bass. I went this past Sunday after all the wind and rain on Saturday – the pressure wasn’t jacked up high, but was building, again I had a 20+ fish day. In these two trips, I have caught some chunky fish, but no trophies. But again, not complaining! I am not going to tell you where I went, but they are both new spots I plan on writing about in the future.

As far as what was working, the speedworm caught probably 30+ fish over these two trips, the Zoom Ultra Vibe in Junebug Red rigged Texas style on a 3/0 Gamakatsu G-Lock Worm Hook, with a 3/16 oz Tungsten weight pegged with a Bobber Stopper. The other bait that has shined on these two trips was the Gambler EZ Swimmer in Copperfield rigged on a ⅛ Oz Mission Fishin 4/0 Screw Lock Hook. Both of these baits I tied on with straight braid – 30 pound Beyond Braid Blackout. I pretty much stuck to these two baits exclusively on these trips because they were working, but also because I was also fishing for research/practice purposes not so much in trying to produce a spot report, so I moved around a bunch and explored areas within these new waters and wanted something I could cast and retrieve and cover lots of water with.

Live Footage

So for my Christmas gift from my wife and sons was a Go Pro style camera. I have to admit that so far I am pretty terrible at fishing while filming, but I was very excited to get a new toy and hope that I am able to catch a few cool clips for link in to the reports. Here are two of the recent Bass I caught since receiving the camera.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Knox Robinson (@knox_spacefish_kayakangler)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Knox Robinson (@knox_spacefish_kayakangler)

Conclusion

If you’re into Bass fishing, now is a great time to go, especially after several cold fronts, these fish will be in full on spawning mode in lakes across Central Florida soon! Inshore fishing can be very rewarding you just have to have a smart gameplan, especially in a kayak! I hope everyone has a fantastic week, thanks for taking the time to read! Thank you to Kayaks by Bo for being our paddle partner on our weekly adventures. Stay safe, be happy, and catch fish! Until next time!