Capt. Joe with a wee snook caught with Capt. Mark Wright. The snook ate a Diezel Minnowz and this was Joe’s very first trip to the Mosquito Lagoon.

I only made one trip to the shallow flats this week. I treated Capt. Joe to his first ever fishing excursion on the Mosquito Lagoon. Heading back to where I found tailing redfish several days before left me scratching my head in disbelief.

The water was no longer clean, the fingerling mullet had vacated and so had the marauding trout which were beating the mullet into submission roughly a week earlier. Yep, things change and sometimes for the worse.

Since we were in a favorite area of mine, we decided to explore a piece of it with top-water plugs. Joe tossed a popper and I threw a K9 Walker from Tsunami Lures. Neither of us experienced any activity on top so we switched tactics.

Affixing a Z-Man Diezel Minnowz in the Green Lantern color to Joe’s line helped our cause. Joe’s first bite turned into a hardhead catfish. Not a typical catch on soft-plastic lures, but not unheard of either. A few minutes later Joe rears back into a solid hook-set and brings a small snook to the surface. A bit later Joe boated a little trout as we finished covering this spot. My EZ Shrimpz rigged weedless was completely ignored.

Not happy with our current location, we skipped across the lagoon to what I hoped would be “fishier” water. Once again we arrived to dirty water holding only huge mullet. We worked the area methodically hoping for a bent rod only to look disappointment in the face for a second time this day.

A final move gave us more of the same. In essence we found only dirty water and a handful of little fish in the four square miles of lagoon we covered. I fully expect better results next week and unless weather keeps me from venturing forth I’ll be out three or four days. I hope my next report is more interesting!