canaveral fishing

We got nearshore on Friday out of Port Canaveral and the slow trolling didn’t disappoint. We initially were going to tarpon fish, but the offshore storm seemed too threatening to go +20 miles south where I think they’re at. We tried up by the Tip and it was dead. Green water and zero bait. There was a ridiculous amount of lightning at 7 AM only 10 miles offshore. We were able to sabiki up plenty of threadfins and blue runners. As we were getting bait, the wind picked up to 20kt in association with the storm. We started slow trolling in only 45ft as the waves were building us and the storm was restricting us on where we could fish.

The kings of 5-20lbs were chewing. We got our first strike within two minutes of slow trolling the bait. On this day, they ate live threadfins, blue runners, and even finger mullet. Yes, you heard that right, kings on mullet. Sometimes they’re extremely picky and will only hit pogies, but they haven’t been that way lately. The big highlight was a giant jack crevalle over 40lbs that I fought for 20 minutes on a stinger rig.

If you do plan on going offshore, the mahi are supposedly inside 100ft and the thermocline has the bottom bite shut down.

Conditions have been quite shifty, but consistently fishy in the Lagoon system. The water has ranged from clear to brown, changing daily. One mile might make the difference between clear water and brown tide water. Snook up to 27 inches have been thick after rain, and inconsistent at times too. Most natural shorelines will hold them, but something different from the surrounding area might hold more. Such as a creek, steeper drop off, or bait pod. Live mullet is a good way to catch heavily pressured fish. In places with plenty of snook and not as much pressure, fly and soft plastics imitating the bait the snook are eating works well. There are a few bigger tarpon up to 50lbs hanging around channels. I hooked a few nice ones, but they all came off. They ate 8 inch live mullet on a 5/0 circle hook.

I’ve been seeing more juvenile sharks and sailcats than ever before and heard an unconfirmed report of a 6ft bull shark. I want to find out why there’s so many sharks right now. Just this evening I saw at least two. I would think the lower than normal salinity would cause fewer sharks, but that doesn’t seem to be the case right now. My best assumption would be that the lack of trout is allowing sharks and sailcats to have less competition for food. Please practice catch and release with all lagoon fish. Handle them with care and have good hook removal and line cutting tools to minimize the time your catch is out of the water.