Although the summer rain patterns have arrived early this year, fishing here in east Central Florida has been good for the most part. One of the outstanding features about being an angler on the Indian River Lagoon Coast of Florida is the diversity of fisheries available, and this past week I had the opportunity to do charters in three different bodies of water.



On the inshore flats, the finger mullet have arrived in vast numbers on just about every flat, and along with them the top-water plug fishing has been unleashed. Arriving on the flat just before sunrise has produced significant action working top-water plugs in shallow in areas of active bait. In most cases this past week the fish were small with a few respectable trout and reds mixed in, but the action was continuous up to about mid-morning with a mixed bag of trout, redfish, bluefish, ladyfish and jacks. Water levels are up a bit due to the rainfall received last week, but the water is still clean for the most part.



The second area fished last week was near-shore out of Port Canaveral. I had been hearing reports of pogie schools and large tarpon, so I opted for a near-shore adventure which ended up being a very nice boat ride. Reports were there was some larger tarpon south of the Port between the Cocoa Pier and Patrick AFB, so I decided to head south to take a look. Well long story short, we ran south all the way to Patrick AFB and found no bait or tarpon. We then turned north and ran past the shoals off of Cape Canaveral and again found no fish and no bait. Did I mention it was a very pretty day and a very nice boat ride?


Lamomda's St Johns River Catfish

The third fishery we fished was a freshwater bass and channel catfish fishing adventure on the St Johns River in the Geneva area. Again we launched at the newly renovated CS Lee Park before first light, and when we reached our first area where I typically bass fish, the wind was blowing hard. Our plan was again to fish top-water plugs, but due to the rough conditions we only managed to catch three largemouth. On this occasion, my clients were looking for some fish to take home, so I suggested we target channel catfish. After switching our tactics to Plan B, we finished out the charter catching a good number of catfish up to 9 pounds.

Lamomda's catfish Dinner



As always, if you have questions on need more information, please contact me.

Good luck and good fishing,

Captain Tom Van Horn
Mosquito Coast Fishing Charters
407-416-1187