My fishing adventures this past week carried me both near-shore along the beach out of Port Canaveral and inshore in both the Mosquito and Indian River Lagoons. Although the weather has been hot and clear and we are seeing hundreds of fish each day, the catching was really a challenge.



On my first adventure I had the pleasure of sharing a day of near-shore fishing out of Port Canaveral with Tom Deltz and his wife Kathleen. Tom had purchased a charter I presented to the Wild Turkey Federation and our intentions were to try and catch him a cobia, but as our spring cobia season often goes rough weather forced use to reschedule several times. So as fishing often goes, we missed the cobia run and Tom settled for a shot at the silver kings (tarpon) currently working bait pods along the beach. With our difficult boat launching conditions at Port Canaveral, I opted to arrive early and caught bail before I met Tom and Kathleen at the dock. As my luck would have it, I made the decision to go north instead of south out of the Port and we spent the first half of the charter looking instead of catching. After making the decision to run south we finally found fish just off of the Cocoa Beach Pier and Tom ended up catching his largest kingfish to date as well as some sharks.



On my next two trips we ventured into the north Indian River Lagoon and Mosquito Lagoon and on both trips we experienced excellent top-water sea trout fishing at first light and the most frustrating redfish bites I've ever seen. You see on both charters I located a substantial school of oversized redfish which simply refused to eat any of the lures or bait we presented and I worked the 200 plus fish school for over four hours on both days. I hate to leave fish to find fish, but on both days we finally couldn't take it anymore and left the school to find fish elsewhere. I would tell you exactly where the school is located, but I would hate to see you frustrated on the water as we were.




Capt. Tom Van Horn Bass fishing Lake Harney with 9lb sunshine bass.



Monster Redfish with Capt. Tom Van Horn