gator trout

Wow! It’s amazing how the lagoon waters can change in the blink of an eye. Last week we were reporting clean water in the Indian and Banana Rivers. Captain Justin and I had our anglers sight-casting to snook and redfish along the flats and mangrove covered shorelines of these bodies of water. This week, with all of the rain that has fallen, it seems that most of our area retention ponds are now overflowing into the lagoons and creating havoc with water clarity and salinity. This has pushed many of the fish off the shorelines and out into the central portions of both rivers. We have had to adjust to these changes and are catching most of our fish under causeway bridges and along the spoil islands right now.

The list this week includes pompano, speckled trout, mangrove snapper, tarpon, jack crevalle, redfish and plenty of those unwanted hardhead and gafftop catfish. Live finger mullet are a great live offering to use and Saltwater Assassin 4-inch sea shad in the pilchard, silver mullet and mama’s 14k colors are producing well. Top water lures like the Rapala Skitterwalk or the Storm Chug Bug are two other great lures to use. Fish around baitfish schools and your odds of a hookup increase greatly. The inlets have been another good place to fish early in the week while the seas were below three feet. Now that the waves are getting bigger the water is getting muddy. This condition will put some fish off their bite, but redfish will usually continue to bite in some cases.

The days are starting to get slightly cooler with a hint of north in the wind direction now that we have entered into “still summer” (known as fall in other states) so captain Justin and I are starting to run full day charters again from now until early December. Please check out our charter offerings on our website, Fineline Fishing Charters.com or give us a text or call at 321-505-8217 to see what we’re catching each day and what trip types we have available. Let’s go catch you next memory!