The Orlando Area Fishing Report from Spotted Tail 3.10.12
First off I want to thank everyone who responded with kind words during my nightmare with the mailing list. There were way too many to respond to individually. I appreciate your patience and cooperation!
Next, last Saturday 10 brave souls attended my Show and Tell Seminar on the Merritt Island NWR. Here’s what a couple of them had to say:
-“Thank you for a great outing Saturday. Super informative and I feel much better prepared to do exploring on my own. You held nothing back and I look forward to putting your advice and counsel into action.” Doug Whitmer
-“Hope I thanked you for a very nice day last Saturday. Got a lot from it and you use your teaching background VERY well.” Dalen Mills
We had a good time and all of us learned something.
And now we get to the fishing. I was supposed to run an on-the-water seminar on Sunday. However, the lightning, rain, and 30 mph winds accompanying a cold front convinced me that would not be a good idea.
The water temperature, as measured by the gauge at Haulover Canal, dropped seven degrees Sunday due to that front.
Monday morning Sam and Dave (not the soul men), son and father, joined me for what turned out to mostly be a brisk morning boat ride. The air was chilly when we came out of Haulover in a largely fruitless search for fish. We did see a couple of redfish and Sam got a dink on the DOA Shrimp. That was it.
Since it was a half day I used the afternoon to go scouting. I found a few reds and managed to get two bites (both of which I missed) but the fish were widely scattered and hard to find.
Wednesday it was overcast and blowing 20 out of the southeast. Eric Hustedt, a fly fisher and Ph.D. from Nashville, wanted to go out anyway. We came out of Haulover and a wave came over the bow of the boat. The water was filthy, roiled up by the wind and waves.
Eric managed to get a trout on a rattle fly. It was a dink, to be sure, but he got it on a fly in those horrible conditions. He had the sense to switch to blind casting with a spin rod.
This was Eric's best trout of the day. Heck, it was the best trout of the week!
Using a DOA Shrimp he managed two redfish and several more trout, much to my surprise. We were out until 330.
Thursday Jim McDonall, a fly fisher and Ph.D. from New York, joined me for a half day. Given my success in the Mosquito Lagoon the previous two trips I did some gambling and launched at Parrish Park. The gamble did not pay off very well.
We did not see a fish in the first spot. Only found a few trout and exactly three black drum in the second. Nothing in the third. We flushed a small and spooky school of reds in the fourth, at which we did not get a shot. And in the fifth there were quite a few trout. They did not bite. There were also a few large redfish. They did not allow us into casting range before disappearing.
Then it was time to go. So Thursday was a big fat bagel.
Wind and developing lung crud prevented me from searching more in the afternoon. I slept much of the day Friday, coughing and sneezing while awake.
And that, folks, is this week’s Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River Lagoon Fishing Report. We’ve had better weeks!
Life is great and I love my work!
Life is short. Go Fishing!
John Kumiski
http://www.spottedtail.com
All content in this blog, including writing and photos, copyright John Kumiski 2012. All rights are reserved.
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Thanks for the ebook Capt. Excellent job in putting everything a fisherman needs to know to be successful on Mosquito Lagoon in your new book.
Eddie Colbert
thanks for the kind words. glad you like it!
jk
I’d be interested in your experience with how the moon phases affect the fishing. I was in the Patillo Creek area on Saturday and not much was happening — a few trout and one double miss by a huge redfish. The moon had been full all night.
the moon phase affects the tides so it has a huge effect in tidal areas. i’m not sure how it affects lagoon fishing. conventional wisdom is that “the fish eat all night on a full moon.” i have fly fished quite successfully at night on a full moon, but never finished the experiment by also fishing on other moon phases.
i have seen the fish act strangely during the day on a full moon. i have also had great success then. I have seen the fish act strangely during the day on other moon phases, and likewise have done very well then. i don’t keep the kind of detailed catch records you would need to draw any kind of definite conclusions.
the best time to go fishing is whenever you can. the best time to catch them is when they’re biting.
I was bank fishing in Patillo on the 23rd off the dirt road by the huge satellite dish near Haul Over. There’s a small peninsula with a beach that we fish from back there. We caught our bag limit in trout in 15 minutes on live medium shrimp. I also caught a 15.7 lb sheepshead and a 29″ Red. It was a good day! Biggest sheepshead I’ve ever seen!
great report! thanks for sharing
jk
Im going wade fishing in Patillo Creek and off of Biolab Rd. I will let ya know how I do. I bought some 3″ Berkley Gulp Shrimp and going to try that in the whale tail flats off of biolab rd.
good luck!
jk
We struck out at Patillo after 2 hours of catching small trout ~ 10-12 inches and a few cats in the early morning. We than went to Haulover and fishing adjacent to the Blair’s Cove ramp we caught absolutely nothing, just a ton of pin fish picking the baits off. We than went to Biolab around 5pm after the storms rolled through and when the tide was going out. Once the sun started gong down the flats came to life with tons of trout and black drum, no reds to be seen though. We fished the flats until we had no lit visibility in the water and called it a day. We caught 15-20 22-30″ Black Drums and a good 30 slot trout. We did spot some monster Black Drum swimming no more than 2 inches from our feet and we could touch and hold them no problem, not sure what us with them but it was weird. It was a good day!
thank you for the report- glad it all came together!
jk