It’s that time of year again where I start taking more anglers into the lagoon system rather than fish on the beach everyday. The reason is twofold. One, the river water levels have increased and dropped in temperature. This brings new life to the shallow grass flats and we start catching a lot more redfish, speckled trout and black drum than in the previous months of the year. Topwater plugs like the Rapala Skitterwalk do a lot of the morning work because the redfish and speckled trout really like the commotion that they make. Saltwater Assassin 4 and 5 inch soft plastics jerk baits are about as weedless as you can get and the trout and reds love them.

The northern Indians and Banana lagoons offer some areas of shelter as well if the winds kick up a little as they sometimes will at this time of the year. Over in the Mosquito Lagoon the reds are starting to school up and this makes finding them much easier than when they are scattered out across the flats. On windy days, we often use chunk baits to catch the fish here because it seems like they will move around more when the wind is blowing then when it’s calm. As they do, they hit the cent trails, coming off of the cut bait and usually slide up the cent trail and pick them up so you can create zones along wind driven points, where you are picking up reds consistently when the conditions are right.

As always, Capt. Russ and I are available for trips in the northern Indian and Mosquito Lagoon so if you’re interested in jumping on board with one of us, please go to the website finelinefishingcharters.com and book your trip with us online. If you have any questions, you can also give us a call at 321-636-3728 and I’ll try to answer any that you may have.

Let’s go catch your next memory!