May Flowers
Updated: May 21
The end of April and this first half of May has been fantastic for inshore fishing in the lagoon. I know nobody likes fish closures but let me just say closures work. Back in September 2022 the FWC closed us on keeping any redfish in the Indian River Lagoon. In the last couple months I have noticed the redfish numbers have sky rocketed.
The lagoon has been on fire for us the last few weeks. The spring time is normally excellent this time of year for big gator trout. We've been fishing the mangrove shorelines and spoil islands catching big sea trout, redfish, snook, and jack crevalle. Our redfish numbers are great and we're catching them in the 25" to 32" range, sea trout are coming in around 20" to 28", all sizes of snook, and big schools of large 15 to 20lb jack crevalle.
We haven't done much inlet fishing the last few weeks but we also haven't missed much out there. The snook bite has been pretty slow at the inlet lately. That's normal for this time of year though cause now is the time those schools of big Goliath grouper show up at the north jetty. If you're into getting your butt whooped pulling a car off the bottom then that's your fish. The grouper get very aggressive this time of year, as far as trying to eat your catch. With that being said, I personally suggest upgrading your gear to something a little heavier to try getting your snook in faster so they don't get eaten.
Now that it's coming into summer and the seas will be much calmer, we'll start booking some more offshore trips here soon. Got out to some of the closer reefs the other day and we limited out with 4 anglers on lane snapper (40). Another recent bottom fishing trip we got into a big school of Toro snapper (Atlantic Bigeye), lane snapper, and some big mangrove snapper. The deeper reefs were loaded with sharks so it made it almost impossible to get anything off the bottom.
Bowfishing is still on fire as always. There are almost unlimited amounts of tilapia and gar to shoot out there. The water levels have went down drastically in the some our usual spots that make it a little sketchy to navigate through. We've moved out into the open lakes and that has been very productive.
I can't thank all my loyal customers enough, y'all are what keep being able to do what I love.