Happy Monday Spacefish!

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday, and got to enjoy a great time with friends, family, and enjoyed some great food! I ended up smoking a Turkey for my family, and it came out beautifully! Speaking of appetites, I wasn’t the only one chewing a lot this week, I got a chance to fish more than usual with a break from school, and on every trip I took, the fish were absolutely chewing inshore! I ended up taking an afternoon trip on Turkey Creek, another short trip hitting some spoil islands in the Grant-Valkaria area, and two different trips to Snag Harbor, which I am going to write about today.

I have fished around the Snag Harbor area before, but I have never actually spent time fishing in this area, but I am glad I finally did, as I had two great trips there. I never caught anything in the trophy category, but I ended up catching a huge volume of fish, had a great time doing it, and got some great exercise out of it.

Launch Spot

So about that exercise thing…I ended up launching out of John Jorgensen’s Landing in Grant, which just re-opened after being closed from the flooding that occurred earlier this fall. I made the voyage across the lagoon, and it’s a bit of a haul. It’s definitely more strenuous of a journey in a kayak than going from Fisherman’s Landing to the Mullet Creek Islands, because Snag Harbor bends back further east than the Mullet Creek Islands, and is a little further north of the launch spot as well. It would be much easier to reach this area when launching a kayak from Honest John’s Fish Camp, but if you live on the mainland side of Brevard, and don’t want to pay the $5 dollar launch fee, Jorgensen’s is probably a better option.

Jorgensen’s Landing is a county owned, and operated boat ramp. It is a dirt ramp, which makes it an awesome spot to launch a kayak, and compared to Christenden’s Landing, which is just a bit further south, it does not get nearly as crowded. It does not have any public restrooms, but there is a port-o-toilet. So if you are planning on having a place to wash your hands after fishing – which I do really enjoy being able to do at places that have restrooms – it’s not here, but other than that, it is a great venue to launch a kayak from.

Quality Fish on Vudu Shrimp

For the majority of my time on the water these past few trips, I have been throwing particular paddle tails, for a future report. But while I was picking up the paddle tails, I also decided to pick up a new color of Vudu Shrimp to try out, “Magic”. It’s a darker olive color shading over a translucent body, with dark stripes across the back, and bright green flakes. You can see it in the picture below.

While I caught a ton of fish on Paddle Tails throughout the last week, I have also caught a high number on the Vudu Shrimp, especially for not fishing it nearly as much as the paddle tails.

If there is one knock I could make for the Vudu is that it does not skip super well, but the smaller 3 inch profile is ¼ of an ounce, so the castability is pretty good, it’s like slinging in a round rock. But for not being as skippable as the DOA Shrimp, this lure does better in the retrieve in my opinion. If you ever really watch a Vudu Shrimp in the water you will see how it’s tail goes up in the air, so you can dead stick it like a ned rig, or slowly drag it back, or give it twitches and pops as well. When you twitch these lures they look extremely life-like.

If you have ever tried to grab a Shrimp from a live well tank, you will notice that they do this “pop” in the water but it’s almost backwards when they do it. My recently turned 6 year old son loves marine life, and recently went through a big “Shrimp” phase. I was rewarding good behavior and good reports at school with taking him to get new Shrimp lures, where he would take the bodies and use them as toys in his make believe aquariums he built out of cardboard boxes.. We also would watch videos of Shrimp underwater. While this Shrimp phase was strange to me, and I didn’t fully understand his fascination, I did appreciate all the time spent watching real Shrimp underwater to see how they behave, I think it’s made me more effective in the retrieval of Shrimp lures.

Lately for me, the strikes come from a slow drag and the occasional twitch. Typically for the paddle tails, or jerk baits I twitch it in more of sidearm manner, but for the shrimp, I like to make a more vertical action, to make the action as lifelike as possible, I make it look like a scared shrimp popping off the bottom, then I let it settle and drag a few more feet, pause and repeat. This is the method that has been working the best for me. I also generously slather Pro-Cure “Shrimp” on the bait every 25-30 casts. I caught a good number of Trout on the Vudu, and a good number of Snook as well. The Trout will take it in a variety of ways, but for the Snook, they almost always pick it up when it’s sitting on the bottom on a dead stick technique, or will hit it on the fall after a pop.

Lots of Smaller Snook on Paddle Tails

Right now we have been experiencing pretty warm weather for this time of year, and the Snook have been pretty active. If you spend the time working mangroves, covering ground, and making good casts into the mangroves there are a ton of smaller Snook that are actively looking to chew.

Right now the water levels are perfect for mangrove fishing. The water levels have dropped enough to make casts into shady pockets as easy as they could possibly be, but they haven’t dropped so low that there’s not enough oxygenated water to hold fish. The key is to find 1.5-3 feet of water under mangrove cover, and there is likely to be a Snook in that area. I have found that they are both on shorelines that are receiving wind, and in wind protected areas. After a little cold front that came on Thanksgiving, I went out again on Saturday and though the wind protected areas were better, but earlier in the week, the wind blown points were the move.

I will go into full detail on my paddle tails in next week’s report, but my advice would be to take any darker profile in the 3-3.5 inch on a ⅛ oz jig and start slinging it. I focused on a slow and steady retrieve, and if that wasn’t working I’d slow it down and keep bottom contact. I picked up a ton of fish with the slow bottom contact retrieve. Below is a small Snook caught on the eastern side of Snag Harbor on a Down South Lures Purple Reign on a Z-Man Trout Eye Jig. It wasn’t the biggest I caught by any means but I thought it was a great picture against the mangrove backdrop. This color was pretty effective all week, but the DOA CAL in Silver Mullet with a Chartreuse Jig also caught its fair share of Snook as well.

Trout Everywhere!

Right now I am catching an absolute boatload of Trout. Even when I fished Turkey Creek I caught several trout east of the US1 bridge. But there are a lot of Trout to be caught not just in Snag Harbor but around the spoil islands between Jorgensen’s Landing and Snag Harbor. Sometimes I would get closer to the mangroves to work more accurate mangrove casts for Snook, but the key to catching Trout was to back up about 25 yards, and make casts right up to the mangroves and work a slow & steady retrieve with pauses and twitches. The Trout seem to be holding off the mangroves in 3-5 feet of water, or staged along the drop offs around the spoil islands.

They would hit any subsurface lure I threw up towards the shoreline and retrieved back slowly, Vudu Shrimp, Down South Paddle Tails, or DOA Paddle Tails. There were literally Trout everywhere. Most of them were small, but I caught a handful in both trips that were between 15-20 inches.

Areas Fished within the “Harbor”

Below I have included a screenshot of the Snag Harbor area, the best points to fish I have circled. The squiggly lines are shorelines that I methodically worked that held good numbers of fish. The X’s marked were dead zones of stagnant water, I caught a Catfish in those places and that was it.

I did not include a screen shot of it, but the southernmost of the two islands you would have to pass when coming over to Snag Harbor from Jorgensen’s held a good Trout bite around the sandbar on the western end, and I also caught some roving Ladyfish and Jacks on the south side of that island as well.

Conclusion

As we continue to plow on through late fall, and arrive at early winter, these areas like Snag Harbor that offer ample mangroves, with some deeper water nearby should prove to be productive areas for inshore fishing.

Right now, the fish are still scattered around, so having a good kayak to cover water, and find the fish can be a life saver! If you are in the market for a new kayak, make sure to swing into Kayaks By Bo located on 520 in Cocoa! With storewide sales, a friendly and informative staff, and payment plan options, your dream fishing kayak may just be a visit away!

Thanks for taking the time to read this report, I hope you all had an awesome Thanksgiving! Have a great week, and may your lines be ever tight! Until next time!

Happy Monday Spacefish!

Today I am going to write about a specific trip I took to the Thousand Islands Conservation Area in Cocoa Beach. I have discussed this area before, and if you have been there yourself you know that this is a beautiful area to go for a paddle, and that the fishing can be really enjoyable as well.

Launch Spot

For this trip, and many others I have taken to this area, I went to Ramp Road Park. But Ramp Road Park was closed. So I ended up going to launch from a place behind the Cocoa Beach Aquatic Center which is a really nice place to launch from, they have floating kayak docks, and areas you can just push in from the mangroves. I liked this spot because being able to launch from a different spot in the area makes it easier to explore different areas.

One of the things about fishing in this area from a kayak is that it is a very expansive area, and almost everywhere looks fishy. It’s definitely an area where one could go fish and be overwhelmed with how much area there is.

On this trip I launched from this new spot and pushed east. I had roughly 4 hours to fish on this trip, and I ended up making a big circle and fishing in between two of the bigger islands. Below I have included a picture of the route that I took. The area where I doubled up, is where I spent the most time as I was most productive with both Redfish and Trout in this area. Despite my poorly drawn lines, I worked this area very methodically.

The Best Part of this Trip

The best part of this trip was catching a few nice Redfish, nothing overly big, but big enough to be fun to catch. The Redfish were in shallower areas on this warm fall afternoon. The water was pretty dingy on this trip, so I was not able to do any sight casting. But I was making casts towards the mangroves and getting thumps on the retrieve. Which means they were probably cruising these shorelines looking for food.

I caught them on DOA Paddletails, in the Silver Mullet and Figi Chix colorways, both paddletails were put on a ⅛ oz Chartreuse DOA CAL Jig. I slathered my baits in Pro-Cure and fished them with slow-steady retrieves, and by bouncing the bottom. Pictured above is the last Red I caught on this afternoon trip, the one pictured below is the first one I caught that afternoon.

Old Reliable

If the Redfish made for a pleasant surprise, the species that I caught in the highest volume was a reliable species to catch in the Thousand Islands, and that is the Speckled Trout. I have mentioned before in other reports that this area is a Juvie Trout factory, I assume this area offers a crucial nursery habitat to this species, because on almost every trip here I have caught 20+ schoolie Trout.

If you follow along the boat channel leaving Ramp Road, and use that like an interstate highway to cover ground, and make exits you will notice that in pretty much every area where the deeper water from the channel provides an exit to a shallow water area these small Trout stack up. So any depth contour is liable to hold a school of hungry juvenile Trout.

While 99% of the Trout I have caught here over the years are nothing to brag about, they do provide action and can make for a good time and tight lines. This is an area I like to take people to that just want to have fun catching some fish, and taking in a beautiful environment to paddle.

Vudu Shrimp, and Gulp! Shrimp are very effective for generating lots of small Trout, but probably the most effective presentation is a smaller 3 to 3.5 inch paddle tail on a jig head. Something you can cast far, bounce/jig back at a slow to medium retrieval speed. Once you find one, you can probably sit in that area and catch a lot, it just depends on what you want. I usually catch 2-3 before I move on, just enough to confirm they are schooled up, but I don’t usually want to waste too much time catching schoolie’s when there is so much water to cover in this area. That being said, If you make a bunch of casts, and covering a bunch of water you are likely to end up catching 20+ of these guys just because they seem to be so abundant here.

Lots of Lady’s

One thing I have noticed in my last couple of trips here, is that there are a ton of Ladyfish, especially in the area I have been in. They have been aggressively going after my paddletails and shrimp lures, and to be honest have been a real pain in the ass to deal with. From the slime, the stink, and the chaffing of leaders. But I did want to mention it because for those that like to cut bait fish, they can make for really good bait.

The area that has deeper water, behind Cocoa Beach High seems to offer a strong concentration of them, this is also an area that has a lot of rolling Tarpon in the summer months, so if soaking chunks of cut Lady is your thing, or if you are willing to put in the effort to catch them, cut them up, and soak them this could be the key to unlocking a monster Red in a highly pressured fishing area.

Conclusion

The Thousand Islands area has always been one I really enjoy fishing at, this fishing is not always dynamite, but it’s a great place for a kayak angler. It is aesthetically beautiful, and offers a ton of area to explore. During the cooler months of the year it’s a good area to fish because there are some deeper water areas close to shallow water areas, such as the area I highlighted on this trip. These areas tend to be productive from early fall-late spring because it offers species like Redfish deeper holes to sit in when cold snaps occur, and warm shallow flats to “sun” in on warm afternoons between the cold fronts.

Also, I’d like to wish everyone a HAPPY THANKSGIVING and say THANK YOU for taking the time to read my reports. I don’t know about you, but Thanksgiving is usually the time in which we start decorating for Christmas, and also when we start doing some Christmas shopping. As you start your process of making lists, and picking up gifts, make sure to stop by Kayaks By Bo in Cocoa!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Until next time!