The fishing has been pretty good lately, and the lagoon is starting to show some signs of the fall transition.

Beach fishing was good this week. Plenty of tarpon, sharks and jacks along the beaches. Inshore is decent, but it’s an early bite.

The bite throughout the New Smyrna Beach area continues to be strong as we approach the end to August. We have been boating several different species both in the shallows of Mosquito Lagoon and also throughout the Intracoastal.

Take the Spacefish Angler Psychology Test and find out how the way you think might be helping or hurting your fishing.

Some lures catch fish because they look incredibly realistic. Others catch fish because they do something that a predator simply can’t ignore. For me, few baits demonstrate that better than what I loosely call the dart bait: a small, slender soft plastic without a paddle tail, curly tail or other appendage doing most of the work.

This past week I mainly focused on night trips, and there was quite a variety of fish showing up. I caught some good snook, redfish, and even a tarpon. Oddly enough, though, I didn’t see very many speckled trout.

The beach fishing is on fire and toothy rockets are blasting off through the bait pods and our slow trolled offerings. Yep, king mackerel have finally hit the beaches in good numbers this week.

Fishing this week has seemed to slow down a little, but there are still plenty of opportunities to find a good bite if you know what to look for. I fished a mixture of morning and evening trips throughout the week, and one pattern continued to stand out: bait and predators are both favoring areas protected from the wind.